paizo.com Recent Reviews by Guy Humualpaizo.com Recent Reviews by Guy Humual2024-03-22T04:03:53Z2024-03-22T04:03:53ZPathfinder Adventure Path #39: City of Seven Spears (Serpent's Skull 3 of 6) (PFRPG): Not bad, but not good either. (3 stars)Guy Humualhttps://paizo.com/products/btpy8h6h?Pathfinder-Adventure-Path-39-City-of-Seven-Spears2013-01-31T00:58:22Z<p><b>Pathfinder Adventure Path #39: City of Seven Spears (Serpent's Skull 3 of 6) (PFRPG)</b></p><p>As a player I do like a sandbox adventure, and this was a nice big sandbox for me to play in, but sadly much of the adventure was monster killing rather then exploring or discovering.</p>
<p>So let me start with the complaints (many of which have already been expressed by other reviewers):</p>
<p>1) <b>the players were not the first group to discover the City of Seven Spears.</b> What?! Turns out there's a ghost of a pathfinder that was part of a group that discovered it from over land, and we run into another pathfinder that was part of a group that discovered it though the darklands. Way to take away the heroic accomplishments of PCs completely.</p>
<p>2) <b>The Spires don't seem to serve any point whatsoever.</b> This adventure starts with the PCs hacking through the brush to discover the amazing sight of Saventh-Yhi. Seeing those spires made our PCs imidately want to explore them. Sadly, apart from some basic bonuses, the spires really didn't do much of anything. My character has slowly been piecing together the underlying plot of the campaign, she even reasoned that the city was there to guard against something, and she had a hypothesis that the spires must be activated all at once or in a set order to open up some secret ancient gate that leads to . . . nope, turns out there's a hole in the ground where some feebleminded elf escaped from that leads to the next chapter in the story.</p>
<p>3) <b>Diplomacy = role for initiative.</b> Our group was really never going to talk our way though this adventure, we really don't have face, but it seems like everyone and everything in this adventure was out to kill us from the start. Only the humans seemed willing to parlay and even they seemed ready to attack us at points. It would have been a nice mix to have more then one area in the city were we weren't automatically attacked the moment we were spotted.</p>
<p>4) <b>Mystery/action/adventure = role for initiative.</b> As others have pointed out there weren't any traps or abandoned temples or anything else that you might associate with discovering an ancient hidden city. If you were expecting Indiana Jones you'd be very much disappointed, this is more Duke Nukem, and while I appreciate there are time and word constraints you could have at least thrown us a bone here. I've been waiting for Indiana Jones style action adventure for sometime now but if that's coming in this adventure path we haven't seen it yet.</p>
<p>There are however some good points, and although I'm not so sure how well they translate from the adventure as written, I am giving this review three stars because of them.</p>
<p>1) <b>Interesting characters and NPCs</b> like them or hate them there are a lot of fun personalities in Saventh-Yhi. Not only do we have all our old friends from the Shiv, but we get to meet faction leaders, and the interesting denizens of city itself. Granted many of these folks are trying to kill us but there were lots of interesting interactions before the inevitable combat.</p>
<p>2) <b>Good boss fights</b> I'm not a huge fan of combat, to me it's usually something that we need to suffer though to advance the plot, but there were some tough fights in this adventure. Often encounters are written with creatures with abilities that counter the abilities of the players, as my character is a witch I notice many monsters that have immunities to mind affecting, but I don't remember too much of that happening here. There were big bad monsters for sure, some with various types of DR, but there weren't too many that seemed to exist solely to dick around the PCs. It's fun sometimes to fight a monster who's biggest defense is a vast amount of HP.</p>
<p>3) <b>There was a promise of mystery and discovery</b> Now granted much of this proved to be a disappointment, but just thinking that we were going to stumble across something vast and wondrous did keep me going. I wish the adventure had delivered but seeing that vast map and listening to the descriptions kept me exploring and anticipating.</p>
<p>4) <b>There is lots of room to expand</b> The adventure as written doesn't seem that impressive but my GM took the time to add some of his own content and these small changes made the adventure the second most memorable in the path thus far. The great thing about a sand box is that it gives you lots of room to expand, if you're a GM that likes building then this adventure has lots of space to build, however if you're the type of GM that prefers the work done for them and tends to run everything as written then this adventure might seem a bit dry.</p>
<p>Overall I think this adventure is probably middle of the road for me. It had great potential but I feel it squandered much of that, and while what we're left with isn't bad, what was missed makes this adventure feel like a bit of a disappointment. We raced through a jungle for this? I can only speak as a player however, I thought our GM did an excellent job, but many of the disappointments were from what he kept from the adventure and the real fun I had was from what he'd added. I'd give the adventure 2.5 stars if I could, I don't feel uncomfortable bumping that up to a generous 3, but I do agree with the overall disappointment of my fellow reviewers. Perhaps one star is a little harsh, I think there's enough good stuff here to warrant at least a two, but I can't disagree with their well argued complaints.</p><p><b>Pathfinder Adventure Path #39: City of Seven Spears (Serpent's Skull 3 of 6) (PFRPG)</b></p><p>As a player I do like a sandbox adventure, and this was a nice big sandbox for me to play in, but sadly much of the adventure was monster killing rather then exploring or discovering.</p>
<p>So let me start with the complaints (many of which have already been expressed by other reviewers):</p>
<p>1) <b>the players were not the first group to discover the City of Seven Spears.</b> What?! Turns out there's a ghost of a pathfinder that was part of a group that discovered it from over land, and we run into another pathfinder that was part of a group that discovered it though the darklands. Way to take away the heroic accomplishments of PCs completely.</p>
<p>2) <b>The Spires don't seem to serve any point whatsoever.</b> This adventure starts with the PCs hacking through the brush to discover the amazing sight of Saventh-Yhi. Seeing those spires made our PCs imidately want to explore them. Sadly, apart from some basic bonuses, the spires really didn't do much of anything. My character has slowly been piecing together the underlying plot of the campaign, she even reasoned that the city was there to guard against something, and she had a hypothesis that the spires must be activated all at once or in a set order to open up some secret ancient gate that leads to . . . nope, turns out there's a hole in the ground where some feebleminded elf escaped from that leads to the next chapter in the story.</p>
<p>3) <b>Diplomacy = role for initiative.</b> Our group was really never going to talk our way though this adventure, we really don't have face, but it seems like everyone and everything in this adventure was out to kill us from the start. Only the humans seemed willing to parlay and even they seemed ready to attack us at points. It would have been a nice mix to have more then one area in the city were we weren't automatically attacked the moment we were spotted.</p>
<p>4) <b>Mystery/action/adventure = role for initiative.</b> As others have pointed out there weren't any traps or abandoned temples or anything else that you might associate with discovering an ancient hidden city. If you were expecting Indiana Jones you'd be very much disappointed, this is more Duke Nukem, and while I appreciate there are time and word constraints you could have at least thrown us a bone here. I've been waiting for Indiana Jones style action adventure for sometime now but if that's coming in this adventure path we haven't seen it yet.</p>
<p>There are however some good points, and although I'm not so sure how well they translate from the adventure as written, I am giving this review three stars because of them.</p>
<p>1) <b>Interesting characters and NPCs</b> like them or hate them there are a lot of fun personalities in Saventh-Yhi. Not only do we have all our old friends from the Shiv, but we get to meet faction leaders, and the interesting denizens of city itself. Granted many of these folks are trying to kill us but there were lots of interesting interactions before the inevitable combat.</p>
<p>2) <b>Good boss fights</b> I'm not a huge fan of combat, to me it's usually something that we need to suffer though to advance the plot, but there were some tough fights in this adventure. Often encounters are written with creatures with abilities that counter the abilities of the players, as my character is a witch I notice many monsters that have immunities to mind affecting, but I don't remember too much of that happening here. There were big bad monsters for sure, some with various types of DR, but there weren't too many that seemed to exist solely to dick around the PCs. It's fun sometimes to fight a monster who's biggest defense is a vast amount of HP.</p>
<p>3) <b>There was a promise of mystery and discovery</b> Now granted much of this proved to be a disappointment, but just thinking that we were going to stumble across something vast and wondrous did keep me going. I wish the adventure had delivered but seeing that vast map and listening to the descriptions kept me exploring and anticipating.</p>
<p>4) <b>There is lots of room to expand</b> The adventure as written doesn't seem that impressive but my GM took the time to add some of his own content and these small changes made the adventure the second most memorable in the path thus far. The great thing about a sand box is that it gives you lots of room to expand, if you're a GM that likes building then this adventure has lots of space to build, however if you're the type of GM that prefers the work done for them and tends to run everything as written then this adventure might seem a bit dry.</p>
<p>Overall I think this adventure is probably middle of the road for me. It had great potential but I feel it squandered much of that, and while what we're left with isn't bad, what was missed makes this adventure feel like a bit of a disappointment. We raced through a jungle for this? I can only speak as a player however, I thought our GM did an excellent job, but many of the disappointments were from what he kept from the adventure and the real fun I had was from what he'd added. I'd give the adventure 2.5 stars if I could, I don't feel uncomfortable bumping that up to a generous 3, but I do agree with the overall disappointment of my fellow reviewers. Perhaps one star is a little harsh, I think there's enough good stuff here to warrant at least a two, but I can't disagree with their well argued complaints.</p>Guy Humual2013-01-31T00:58:22ZPathfinder Adventure Path #38: Racing to Ruin (Serpent's Skull 2 of 6) (PFRPG): Not a bad adventure, but it fails to deliver on it's premise (3 stars)Guy Humualhttps://paizo.com/products/btpy8gng?Pathfinder-Adventure-Path-38-Racing-to-Ruin2012-03-14T16:50:30Z<p><b>Pathfinder Adventure Path #38: Racing to Ruin (Serpent's Skull 2 of 6) (PFRPG)</b></p><p>Racing to Ruin accomplishes what it sets out to do, to connect Souls for the Smuggler’s Shiv with the City of Seven Spears, and completing that task without strange unexpected jumps in the narrative is all that we really ask for in an adventure. I have two complaints though, and both involve the premises set up in the title. Review behind the spoilers:
<br />
[Spoiler omitted]</p><p><b>Pathfinder Adventure Path #38: Racing to Ruin (Serpent's Skull 2 of 6) (PFRPG)</b></p><p>Racing to Ruin accomplishes what it sets out to do, to connect Souls for the Smuggler’s Shiv with the City of Seven Spears, and completing that task without strange unexpected jumps in the narrative is all that we really ask for in an adventure. I have two complaints though, and both involve the premises set up in the title. Review behind the spoilers:
<br />
[Spoiler omitted]</p>Guy Humual2012-03-14T16:50:30ZWayfinder #2 (PFRPG) PDF: This is one of the finest freebies in the Gaming market (4 stars)Guy Humualhttps://paizo.com/products/btpy8ypc?Wayfinder-22010-02-17T06:27:54Z<p><b>Wayfinder #2 (PFRPG) PDF</b></p><p>Just looking though this magazine, without actually reading anything, you can't help but be amazed at the artwork and layout. This matches and even exceeds many of the early Dragon Magazines. There's artwork in here that belongs in monster manuals, that belongs in supplements, that belongs in adventure modules, but this is a FREE, read that again: <b>FREE</b>, fan magazine! </p>
<p>Now let's look at the content: New Prestige Classes? Check! New Races? Check! New Monsters? Check! Ready made NPCs? Check! Want more? Well aren't you greedy . . . this thing is free fan mag remember. What do you expect for free? But wait, there is more! Poetry! Fiction! Crosswords! Recipes! and even excerpts from a Pathfinder based play. All in all this is an incredible piece of work. Everyone involved should feel extremely proud and I can't wait to see Wayfinder 3.</p><p><b>Wayfinder #2 (PFRPG) PDF</b></p><p>Just looking though this magazine, without actually reading anything, you can't help but be amazed at the artwork and layout. This matches and even exceeds many of the early Dragon Magazines. There's artwork in here that belongs in monster manuals, that belongs in supplements, that belongs in adventure modules, but this is a FREE, read that again: <b>FREE</b>, fan magazine! </p>
<p>Now let's look at the content: New Prestige Classes? Check! New Races? Check! New Monsters? Check! Ready made NPCs? Check! Want more? Well aren't you greedy . . . this thing is free fan mag remember. What do you expect for free? But wait, there is more! Poetry! Fiction! Crosswords! Recipes! and even excerpts from a Pathfinder based play. All in all this is an incredible piece of work. Everyone involved should feel extremely proud and I can't wait to see Wayfinder 3.</p>Guy Humual2010-02-17T06:27:54Z