Alcibyades's page

I've been preparing some changes to Saventh-Yhi, that I've collected here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pav11mT0DK405bZ9mXr7QZKP3xQZbVgM/view?usp= sharing

I had two major goals in the changes I made to Saventh-Yhi: the first was substantiate the sense that Saventh-Yhi was a city of wonders and treasures; the second was to complicate the internal dynamics of some of the districts and the relationships between districts so that PCs had more options to achieve goals than “slay at least 100 vegepygmies.” What you won’t find here is a detailed description of buildings and sites.

In each district I added a minor treasure that is tied to the district and cannot be moved without damaging the item, explaining why Urschlar was unable or unwilling to hide them. I also used the minor treasures to address some of the game-play consequences of Saventh-Yhi’s isolation, such as a chest that summons a Mercane interested in trading magic items.

I also added a more major treasure that ties to the history of the city in each district, treasures either hidden by Urschlar or already hidden by the time he arrived on the scene. I’m planning to put each major treasure in a five room dungeon (nerdsonearth.com/2017/12/5-room-dungeon/) and while I’ve included some notes on both the treasure and the dungeon, I haven’t detailed the dungeons.

I would make finding the minor and major treasures worth a discovery point each.

To differentiate each district I included random encounter tables for each district.

I don’t directly address the conquest conditions spelled out in the text, but I tried to provide new quests/opportunities to form alliances with the various factions.

A major potential source of complication to Saventh-Yhi is the actions taken by and alliances formed by rival factions. I don’t detail them below, but hopefully the quests/dynamics identified for each district can provide ideas for what the other factions are doing: if the PCs run across a rival faction in the mercantile district for instance, they may be trying to capture ketches in order to secure an alliance with Olujimi. The other factions will likely also be in conflict with the PC’s faction over control of some of the minor treasures, particularly those with limited uses.

I removed the Aboleth from the city. The only significant change this required was to change Ugimmo’s (the boggard oracle) reason for being in the Government District.

I’ve elaborated the history of the city quite a bit for my own campaign, but I’ve tried to minimize references to this history from the text.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Some strategies for creating player interest in Savith-Yhi:

Consider adding fabled treasures to the city. I put one in each district and tried to make them things that tied into the ancient history of the city. I just made it so that Urschlar hid many of them, in addition to the argental font. I generally just put them in a five room dungeon, that could be done in a session. Some examples were a drum that disrupted serpent folk telepathy and mental attacks; part of the regalia of the ancient kings and queens that helped protect against aberrations.

Revisit the pacification conditions for the districts. Most of them are kill x number of creatures, which are kind of boring. You can make the various districts interact a little more a way of creating more interesting potential pacification conditions: so if Ergizamora has kidnapped some of the monkeys, rescuing them might be a condition. You can pull from video games: a bodyguarding/escort quest, an item fetch quest, etc. I made the troglodytes a cruel ruling class over cowed lizard folk in the temple district, but the lizard folk would only rebel and ally with the players if the players could bring them the feathers they needed to make a ceremonial headdress, feathers from the camulatz, of course.

Depending on your players you can use the discovery point system as well. As presented it is pretty abstract, but I made little partial clues for each discovery point that could slowly be pieced together in order to get a picture of what had happened to the city. I also included clues about the fabled treasures here and and clues that could help bypass some of the traps and puzzles in the fabled treasure dungeons.

Just some thoughts. Good luck.

I'm thinking of running this adventure path in the next couple of months: something about the setting and the idea of it is really appealing. That said, the AP seems to have some weaknesses that, if addressed, could make for a more fun experience for all concerned. From reading the AP and what people have said on this board here is my sense of the problems with the AP.

1) Racing to Ruin feels too much like a rail road.
2) The serpent folk kind of disappear in the adventure path, which is troubling because they are the final antagonist of the first adventure and of the last adventure path as a whole.
3) Saventh-Yhi isn't all that well fleshed out, can be boring and the adventures that take place there are needlessly separated.
Some things about Saventh-Yhi just don't make a ton of sense to me--I don't see what the Aboleth adds to the adventure.
It also doesn't seem like there is a lot of opportunity for non-combat resolution of conflict, so many of the groups in the city are unwaveringly hostile to the PCs.
4) For all the talk of the characters being the first to discover the city, NPC pathfinders got there first and end up being really important to the plot.
5) The player's motivation needs to change throughout the AP, though this isn't really addressed in the text. In the first they just want to survive and get back to land. In 2-4 they are in some weird competition? and in 5-6 they need to avert the rise of an evil god.

I have some thoughts on how to deal with some of these issues, but I'd appreciate any suggestions anyone has or comments on any other problems they encountered/forsee with the AP. A lot of people on this board have already taken steps to deal with some of the issues, especially of fleshing out Saventh-Yhi and it seems like the best way to make the Saventh-Yhi portion fun is to play up the element of competition/rivalry with the other factions, so I'll make sure to emphasize that.

I'm thinking of adapting the chase rules to make a kind of overland race. The race would consist of cards with skill challenges on them, but the party's goal is to accumulate a number of cards before the rival factions do, (which represents who gets to Tazion or Kalabuto first). To diminish the railroady-ness of it maybe I'd give the players the choice of two cards where they could see name of the encounter but not necessarily the details of the DCs (so players could choose, for instance, between facing the hungry hippos or the treacherous ford and could make educated guesses about what skills they could use). It would be easy to throw in random encounters into the deck as well. I think I'd still like to use some of the set encounters as well, as well as some way for the pcs to interact with other factions.

I'm less sure how address the fact that scheming serpent folk disappear from the adventure path till about book 5. I guess what makes the most sense is to have serpent folk infiltrate some of the rivals in Racing to Ruin and then work at cross purposes with the PC's while they are in Saventh-Yhi. Maybe they are looking for a way to get to Ilmuria. Because I think the Aboleth is kind of a wasted opportunity, I was thinking of putting something serpent folk related in that pool. Maybe there is an underwater crypt or something that the serpent folk are looking for, or use to unleash some kind of monster on the various groups in Saventh-Yhi.

The other big stumbling block from a plot point of view is how to motivate parts 4 and 5 without having the pathfinders already in Ilmuria. The PC's only find out about the portal because a pathfinders stumbles out of it and book 5 is all about rescuing a pathfinder. I'm toying with the idea of replacing the pathfinder with survivors from the original Saventh-Yhi. Not really "survivors" but undead Zura-cultists who were placed in stasis or something to explain how they survived so long and to tie to the Zura temple in adventure 1 as well. Also thinking about making the Urdefhans into ancient Zura cultists who were cast into Abbadon and transformed there.

I'm not sure how to address the PC's motivations. They get a prophetic vision at the beginning of racing to ruin, but I'm not sure it would make a ton of sense or let them know what is at stake in the following encounters.

I'm probably getting ahead of myself here, but does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions as to how to make the adventure path as enjoyable as possible?