This is the best campaign setting book in the history of Paizo! They not only balanced flavor with rules but they created a campaign setting book done right. It's written from the point of view of the people that live there so it can be used as a destination easily or as an origin. I love that. This is the biggest problem I have had with campaign settings books for distant locales. This is totally done right and I will cherish it forever.
This novel was better than any action movie. Pirate's Honor pulled me into the relationships, Pirates Honor had me worried about the character's fates, and Pirates Prophecy had me jumping out of my seat and hoping everything would be ok. This book was amazing and I have to give the author credit for doing such a good job integrating game mechanics into the novel without it feeling forced. I loved it!
I can't believe how shocked I was by the surprises in this book.
Things I liked:
I loved how it started right where the first one ended. I didn't expect that and since I didn't want Pirate's Honor to end and I got my wish. It was really nice.
The relationships deepen and friendships form plus there are shocking relationships in this story that are indefinitely more intense than the relationships in the first book. I was amazed by the intensity that these relationships burn and it continued to make me turn the page and not want to book down. That's what I want in a book.
Chris is amazing and this makes me want to look into his non-Pathfinder titles.
The only drawback to this story was it wasn't long enough. I loved the path of the main character and the dark and gory details of his life. This book was wonderfully bleak and fantastically uplifting at the same time. I truly enjoyed this novel.
I loved how the relationships in the book kept me on my seat. This is not a stereotypical pirate story. It is a cross genre beast of tension, intrigue, and romance. I loved it so much. I can't wait till the next one.
I am glad that that Paizo is finally releasing campaign material in the RPG line. This was a much needed book to collect many rules that have been published throughout Pathfinder's existence and consolidate and update them. I love the flavor and the updates to all the existing organizations as well as the detail added to the organizations bringing them up to date in 4717
I agree with a lot of the other reviewers negative points but none of them lead to me not LOVING this scenario. I loved the amount of depth the scenario had. Yeah, it had a lot of what some players would consider extra content, but I had a blast in this scenario. My whole table did, we loved all the role playing and really had fun in the combats.
This scenario is a lackluster an investigation with unbalanced poorly planned encounters. It's too reliant on a specific skill set and class abilities and doesn't give any workarounds. I felt bad for my GM who was trying so hard to convey a story and wasn't given the tools to do it.
I loved this sequel. It's short and doesn't go bigger than the last few sequels but it's appropriate for the story. The author made good choices to show progression of the characters and an appropriate adventure for 4 chiefs. I suspect it's setting up for a much bigger 4th adventure.
The adventure leave a lot to the GM and the players and has much more free time to let the players act like goblin chiefs. The Pregens are built and progressed well.
One thing I would like to see if a full module focusing on these characters.
This is a pretty fun scenario with an ending that completely ruins it.
Spoiler:
The ending has an ill conceived puzzle that is not fun to GM or play. After a really long and not easy scenario, having the success of the scenario hinge on a stupid puzzle that isn't explained well in the scenario ruins it for everyone.
I would have rated this 3 or 4 stars if it didn't have that awful puzzle at the end.
Brandon Hodge was definitely the best choice for this adventure. He expertly handled historical content and mixed the fantasy with real world elements in a way that enhanced the story. I love this adventure and he it gives me hope for seeing more boundary pushing content from Brandon and from Paizo as a whole.
For the first time in a while I had to force myself to read at a slow pace because I didn't want this book to end. It is fantastic and well worth the read.
I love this scenario and have run it 10+ times now. This scenario has lots of roleplaying, deep faction missions which tie back to the campaign setting, great NPC interaction, awesome villains, and challenging scenarios that are just that, a challenge without being impossible.
Warnings to GMs
* Watch your time, it can run really long
* If your table has under 5 players, don't forget to downscale using the including guidlines. It is easy to forget and can make the scenario too tough if you miss it.
This is hands down the most impressive mini in any set yet. Everyone I show the ogre to is incredibly impressed and even a little terrified. A friend of mind described it as having a +20 intimidate just by being place on the battle mat. Good job!
I love the Rise of the Runelords set and I have very few complaints about any of the minis, except for this awful yeti. I can't stand him. The artwork on the Ultimate combat is pretty cool but this is a poor representation. I would be much happier with a nice big mini based on this: https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/285420_4236196659879_458148106_ n.jpg
I liked this scenario a lot. I found it could have been organized a little better but it fit the bill of a nice straight forward dungeon crawl with very interesting characters and a boss fight with a great payoff.
This is quick honest review of what I thought about this scenario first as a player then as a GM.
As a player a this scenario has a lot of detail and was a bit confusing. After running it I can say that it is because it requires a lot of prep. I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner judge.
As a GM I found it full of a great local with well fleshed out characters. It was a cluttered in it's organization which created a lot more work for me.
This scenario would have gotten 5 stars from me if it was better organized. I had a lot of characters and events to keep track of and if I had them all in one place with a suggested order of events it would have made it much easier on me for preparation even if things didn't happen in the suggested order.
I would recommend this scenario for experienced judges and experienced players. If you like running or playing high scenarios with in depth role playing I fully suggest it but if you are looking for a straight forward scenario or dungeon crawl I would say avoid it. Highly recommended scenario but not for beginners.
This scenario was a very well thought out story with a great dynamic between combat and role playing. I disagree with the previous reviews that the chase mechanics are bad, I think they just require more preparation on the part of the GM. This is a fantastic scenario and myself and players enjoyed going through it. The only problem I had with it is in order to run it to its full potential I spent an entire day prepping it.
P.S. This scenario can run long, better to put it in a convention slot then a game day or evening game slot. I do not recommend this scenario for novice GMs.
Didn't expect to see these on the shelf at the game store yesterday and I picked them up right away. Opening the pack revealed paint jobs on the mini's that are all superior to the original sculpts. I am very happy with these and glad that they look so great.
Review on Each mini
1. Evil Cleric - Great detail and an awesome color choice. The paint job is amazing and I find I can use this mini for a lot of different PCs and NPCs. One of the things I like about this miniature is that it represents a female character and good miniatures of female characters are hard to find.
2. I love this succubus! The black wings are a good choice; having the alternate paint let's me do a lot of different things in my games and she came out great!
3. The Scarlet Gargoyle - This is the only mini I wasn't really happy with. the paint looks to me like I could have done it myself. If it wasn't for the zombies I would have given this product 4 stars.
4. Zombies! I was not happy with the zombie in the Heroes and Monster set. This zombie makes up for it with more detail and nice use of color! I love these zombies.
Overall I think this product is great. I am happy to see some alternate paint selections for my minis and would love to see more. (On the top of my list is a bigger troll, I would like to see wizkids make a bigger troll. Tiny Troll is sad, make tiny troll happy.)
Crystal, you did it right. This adventure really filled us with dread. We loved the tension, the role playing encounters, and the combat. I found it truly epic and very challenging. I only got to play it because my good friends Shawn and Katie opted to play pregens so we could make the table legal. Thanks Shawn and Katie and thanks Crystal for writing and AWESOME adventure. Out of all the scenario authors Crystal never fails to stay my favorite, I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.
I had a blast in this adventure! I owe my experience to my GM who admittedly made the adventure a lot more intense by upping the tension.
Spoiler:
Once the opera went to hell, every time we looked back the rooms were full of hordes of zombies. Encounters would be intensified through the doors groaning, heaving, and creaking with the hordes of zombies pushing to get to us as we fought through the cultists to get to their boss. At one point while we were in a battle a door exploded and a zombie T-rex was chomping at us to get in. We were terrified and had a blast!
The Lands of the Linnorm Kings is one of the most robust Pathfinder Campaign setting books I have read. Paizo has really stepped up their quality, as this book contains detailed and well written regional information, campaign integration guidelines (including a reputation rules-set), and a nice bestiary (with some generic NPCs). This book was written by a dream team of Paizo authors, Matthew Goodall, Jonathan Keith, Colin McComb, and Rob McCreary and contained everything I expected from a campaign supplement with an attention to detail that took it above and beyond.
The regional information section includes a timeline and details on the areas of Broken Bay, Grungir Forest, Hagreach (Which includes the city of Trollheim), Icemark, the Ironbound Islands, Southmoor, and the Thanelands. Each area contains background information, a gazetteer, information on the rulers, and a map of the capital (or significant landmark). This section was really interesting to me as it gave much more detailed information on areas I have played and run in PFS. I particularly liked the area on Hagreach as I have always been curious about Trollheim, the Blackravens, and Freyr Darkwine.
The following chapter, the Proving Grounds, is a list of adventure sites and events. When I first skimmed this chapter I dismissed it as adventure hooks and MacGuffins. When I took the time to read through it, I realized that they are more like adventure seeds. Each section includes a short stat block with a location, master, and notable inhabitants. It then has detailed information for building adventures around a location and an event. It gives a GM everything they need in order to build a rich adventure without leading them by the nose through a prebuilt scenario. Awesome job Paizo!
Chapter 3 has tools useful for GMs running campaigns in the Linnorm Kingdoms or any Viking setting including rules for reputation, effigies, weregild and ransom, and stats on three powerful magical items. As I read through this chapter I imagined myself either playing or running a game with Viking raids, adventuring to dark caves and fighting linnorms, massive Viking combat, and delving deep into the Ulfen culture. This chapter seemed very specialized in its use and will be widely ignored by players and GMs who focus on PFS and those not interested in creating their own Viking campaign setting.
The Bestiary goes a little beyond what I expect from a campaign book. We are given the usual encounter tables (all bestiary 1, 2, and this book) and a collection of creatures. We have the usual monsters of the region (5 new creatures!), plus four detailed generic NPC! This was my second favorite section since it gifted me with unique monstery goodness plus some nice statblocks to aid me with Ulfen encounters and character concept inspiration.
Who should buy this book?
Anyone interested in running a Viking game. It has plenty of details to run a game in the intended region or the location details, adventure seeds, and rulesets can be easily ported to any campaign setting .
Readers who want to deepen their understanding of another awesome region of Golarion.
GMs and Players looking to deepend their Ulfen Characters’ backgrounds.
PFS Judges who want to run richer locations and encounters in scenarios based in this region.
In conclusion, I love this book. I don’t run home games anymore yet I found myself wanting to build a Viking setting after reading it. I enjoyed the fluff, as setting and character detail are my favorite part of the game. Thanks Paizo for assembling a great collection of authors who were able to fit the richness of a 200 page campaign setting into a 63 page supplement.
It looks like for some reason Paizo didn't include the three levels of the Tanessen Tower maps in their "Tomorrow Must Burn" PDFs. Has anyone made these on their own?
I see that they're not in the interactive maps, but they are in the adventure.
The first floor (or sixth floor) is on page 41 and the other two floors on page 43.
The Mechanical Carny on page 86 says it's possible to replace some of its Berserk-abilites (Berserk and Berserk Slam) to other listed abilites.
But the stat block does not show any Berserk-abilites.
The Bida can grab people. But how do you guys calculate the DC to escape from it's grab when there is no Atheltics in the stat block to use? Assume it's Expert or Master in Athletics? Use the same DC as it's Constrict? :)
From the Bestiary, page 5: "Skills The creature is trained or better in these skills. For untrained skills, use the corresponding ability modifer."
Athletics isn't listed in the bida's stat block, and its strength is +6. This means the bida's athletics DC is 16.
Thanks, sometimes the answers are there, right in the book. Just not the ones I was looking in :-)
Ok, early in the adventure you come across a piece of treasure called a staff of marvelous medicines. I haven't come across this anywhere before. Am I missing it somewhere, or did this get cut for space? Any suggestions on what I should replace it with
Not presented as a staff, but it could have these properties:
Are there any new ancestries and/or heritages in this book?
I think it's only new thematic Backgrounds for the regions, and a new Archetype for each region.
But in October you'll get the Character Guide, and that's going to be filled with new heritages and four new ancestries and nearly 100 new ancestry feats.
Before I answer, note that this is my interpretation of the rules. The rules on gaining Focus Points aren't exactly written very clearly, and some people will argue that you start with 2 Focus Points because you have two Focus Powers (Wild Morph and Wild Sape). I however, do not think this is the case.
Is this really an discussion out there? Yeah you get two Focus spells, but neither the Wild-order or the Wild Shape feat says that you increase the Focus pool. Leaf and Storm says that you do increase the pool, so that should also point to how Wild should be read. I thought that the text was clear, but then English isn't my first language ;)
Huh. I imagine that claiming a Hellknight fortress as their own (abandoned or not) will never cause the party any grief, or cause any hard feelings or antipathy among other groups anywhere on the continent.
It's fine, it's all fine here.
Given that it's the Order of the Nail (who are all about bringing civilization to savages) and it's currently abandoned to what they likely regard as savages, taking it over and fixing it up (and thus 'reclaiming it for civilization') is almost certain to win their friendship more than their dislike. This is particularly true if one of the PCs is interested in becoming a Hellknight (which one of the player's guide backgrounds suggests).
Plus, even if they objected, as long as the PCs claim is legal by the laws of the land they're in the Hellknights have their hands tied.
I also think that the player guide background you're probably talking about also hints on why the Nail will accept it.
One wild guess on why one would select to show liveplays of their stuff on Geek & Sundry: Their 2 million subscribers on YouTube. It's going to reach a lot more people than doing a liveplay on Paizo's own YouTube-channel.
To the 2nd point. Though they don't have any story element, I would think it's possible to use the random scenario templates as stand alone scenarios or "side quests".
I'm still hoping that we actually get physical cards one day!
The last line of the blog:
"And in the near future, they’ll also be available as a print-on-demand card set from our friends at DriveThru Cards. (After they go live, we’ll mention it in a future blog.)"
The mention of "Core Rulebook" made me think it was for 2e.
Oh, I wasn't thinking about that. Sorry if anyone got things in a mix :) But since this was a question about the adventure path box, I thought it was nice to refer to the core box rules. :)
Edit:
The mention that there will be brief conversion notes in the rulebook in this blog post.
Is it just me or are the maps in the PDF, lower rez than usual?
Especially the ship interior in the back of the PDF is low-rez for me. I can barely make out any details.
I am seeing the same thing, too. It's not just you. Why are they so low-rez?
It looks like they had an issue with the maps in the PDF this time, because I just bought the PDF and have the same problem. And some people in the Costumer Service forums also has it.
First of all, the word proficient by itself is meaningless to people unfamiliar with the game.
Um... You'd think that would be explained in the rules? I would think many of the words is meaningless more or less for people unfamiliar with the game without reading the rules/learning the rules from someone familiar with the game.
While I do like the layout of the cards, I also find the background kind of busy and those curly lines in some of the art strange. Why draw those over some of the fine art. But I'm looking forward to more of PACG, and it will probably make sense as I get the cards in my hands this spring/summer :)
I'm talking about his powers only, so definitely not 12. Still the same local help in combat, and the weapon recharging (sure, they gave him a power he already gets, but earlier). To me, the powers make the character, not the skills. Those are a major part of the characters, and are something I really expected to be unique. I'm at least waiting to get the Fighter class deck now. I was going to pre-order it, because I wanted all 3 Valeros, but now I'm going to wait and see if he has anything powerwise that really separates him from the other two.
Of course he could have new powers. The powers don't make him Valeros, having a fighter theme to them would. They could give him new powers that still fit a fighter. Being Valeros doesn't mean you have those powers, it means you're a fighter.
I'm not going to convince you but here's my point of view on this.
1. Ok, there is two changes in his pre-role powers. The same is with Merisiel, but she looses her sneak attack to some new finesse power. The other two returning friends I don't know much about. And we haven't seen anything from the roles yet.
2. I think character is more than just powers. Skills and cards is pretty important. It's the combination of fun powers, skills and cards that makes a character the character for me.
3.I understand that you would wait with the deck. We don't know much about any of the decks, so I would wait with them all. What we know is probably that the 7 iconics will look somewhat as the previous versions, but not a exact copy. And there is three other characters in those decks that will be different.
4. And here is probably the point where we disagree the most :)
I see Valeros as the iconic character Valeros and understands that he, just as Merisiel, will look somewhat like his former self. Not an exact copy, but he's still the charmer that can swing the blade, and now probably keep from drowning. So when I bring out the S&S version of Valeros, I will feel like it's a character I know. Some differences, but it's my old buddy. He's just not a generic fighter that have a brand new power set. Now. We still don't know how his roles will work. And the other fighters from the Class decks aren't revealed (other than picture and some naming). But I think you will find what you're looking for there. These are named characters. I think that having Valeros powers is much being Valeros. Having one of the three versions of Valeros or the other three characters from the Fighter Deck, that is having a fighter.
But hey, I understand your point of view. I just like how they are treating the iconics. I play a lot of Nintendo. Mario is still Mario with some tweaks in the first couple of levels. But every game gives him new/different upgrades/powers later in the game.
I look forward to the role cards, because only seeing the character, I really feel like Valeros got screwed. Yea, his skills were tweaked a little, but his base powers are basically the same.
Afraid I rather fail to see how he's been 'screwed' - they always said the new versions of old characters would be very similar though not exactly the same. Unless you're saying you think his base powers are not strong enough already?
I'm not saying he's screwed in how powerful he is,but in how unique he is versus his Runelords counterpart. I can understand having similarities, but his powers have barely been changed at all.
12 changes in his pre-role character. How could they have changed him more? I can understand the want of completely new Powers, but then he's not Valeros anymore is he? :)
I like the differences, and I can't wait to see how his roles look.
I was so sure I was going to play Jirelle and Lirianne and one more for my first group. Now both Alahazra and Seltyiel seems quite interesting. And Oloch. And Damiel has bombs...
