Jenner2057's page

Well, we began Hell's Rebels and immediately started having an issue. We started playing in Sept and our DM is a schoolteacher. And even from the player side of the screen, I could tell Hells Rebels was going to be a complex campaign with the rebellion turns, mixed in with predetermined events and NPC encounters on top of the standard location-based encounters. Nothing too horrible, but it was a bit much for our schoolteacher at the beginning of a brand new school year.

So, my wife volunteered to step in to try her hand at DMing for the very first time. She agreed to take all the event/RP encounters and the original DM would continue to handle the combat encounters, since she's not quite as familiar with that side part of the game. So far, it's worked pretty well. They've co-DM'd for three sessions now and it's gone quite smoothly. We reached the end of book 1 this weekend and she even flexed a bit to take over the combats on the first floor of the Fantasmagorium.

Verdict: Book 1 of Hell's Rebels has been excellent!
Also, co-DMing is a possibility to consider if one of your DMs is getting overloaded.

Moving on to Book 2...
Cheers!

I'll agree with all of Ironbar's great suggestions. I like a whip myself with the nice long 15-ft reach and aiding from there. You can also go the trip or disarm route if you want ... though you don't have the STR or BAB to make it anything more than a "hope I roll well..." Sometimes you get lucky or you might get a wizard target that you can disarm his staff.
Just what I like to do!

Hell's Rebels = hands-down my favourite AP that I've run.

Fantastic! Glad to hear that! It seems to be quite high on most folks' lists so I'm anxious to get to play in it!

Strange Aeons = I wish I could've run this one, and the first book is one of the best I've read.

I've prep'ed all six books and it has its highs and lows. I'm working on tightening some of the connections and coming up with extra motivations.

Best of luck for both of those campaigns! I hope you enjoy them.

Thank you sir! I love this thread and will continue to try to report back semi regularly. Cheers!! <salute!>

That's really impressive!

Thank you very much!

Which APs have you lot played through?

And what's next? :D

Here's what we've done...

And as for what's next, this weekend we start Hell's Rebels where I get a break back to the player side and then I have Strange Aeons ready to go after.

As evident from the years completed above, we usually try to have two APs running at once. That way we can do 2 books from one and then give the DM a break by switching to another AP where we'll do 2 books. If your group can, I highly recommend taking turns like that. It really helps to keep any one person from getting burnt out. But we're blessed to have 3 DMs that can round-robin like that.

After 44 sessions, finished up my Age of Worms, Pathfinder conversion campaign this weekend. It ended with a whimper not a bang with Kyuss going down like a chump. Oh well.
I'll take a second to congratulate our group on our 14th adventure path completed. Been playing every Sunday for 20 years now. Some of the faces have changed, but it's been a good group of guys and gals. Cheers!

And the final death of the campaign...

Death #15
Name: Vilipende
Race/Class: Teifling/Paladin 20
Adventure: Dawn of a New Age
Location: The Alhaster Spire
Catalyst: Broodfiends

The Hero Points awarded from "Spire of Long Shadow" are running low, so we actually got another real death yesterday.

Death #13
Name: Ruso
Race/Class: Human/Monk (Zen Archer) 19
Adventure: Dawn of a New Age
Location: The Alhaster Spire
Catalyst: Maralee, Advanced Kyuss Knight
Gory Details:

And Death #14 (this one was Hero Point saved)
Name: Dax
Race/Class: Human/Witch (Hedge Witch Healer) 19
Adventure: Dawn of a New Age
Location: The Alhaster Spire
Catalyst: Kyuss Knights… lots of Kyuss Knights
Gory Details:

Name: Ruso
Race/Class: Human / Monk (Zen Archer) 18
Adventure: Into the Wormcrawl Fissure
Location: Dragotha's Lair
Catalyst: ... Dragotha... duh... :)

Gory Details...

Isn't there something in there about him spending six rounds to buff, yeah right, like all those minions would last that long.

Absolutely! Though he has "quickened spell", so I think it only took him 3 rounds to buff up. All for two "greater dispel magics" to make all that prep time worthless. Sigh. The action economy struggle for solo bosses is real. LOL.

WotB is nasty(I used the 3.5 version) but sadly never got it to stick. I celebrate vicariously through you

Thank you! I've still got a book and a half to rack up some more kills (hero point saves or not...)

Yeah, if I do ever end up doing WotR, I would definitely look at tweaking the mythic rules. Whether I would go with exactly Legendary's tweaks or not I would decide nearer the time.

I'll agree both that it's a great AP story wise and that the mythic rules don't work. I used a rechargeable pool of Hero Points and that worked great 99% of the time.

I documented the changes I made over on the Wrath thread.
Link if you're curious.

Deaths #9, #10 and #11 (all Hero Point saved)

Names/Classes: Daxum (Hedge Witch Healer 18), Ruso (Zen Archer 18), Archie (Bard 18)
Adventure: Into the Wormcrawl Fissure
Location: Apostle Caves
Catalyst: Wail of the Banshee (again)
Gory Details:

We finished our "Return of the Runelords" campaign after 44 sessions played over 21 months (Aug 23 to May 25) and alternating between our other current campaign, "Age of Worms".
Overall verdict: A fantastic campaign to play in. Good lore and locations as well as lots of callbacks to other campaigns. Some fun twists and reveals along the way.
My only complaint is from my own expectation management. I was told that our Shattered Stars characters would play a part, so I got excited and dusted off my old character for a return. It wasn't nearly as much of a return as I'd thought/hoped. Oh well. If I were to take a shot at running it later...

The Parchlands are in the Meraz Desert east/southeast in Casmaron.

From Okeno, you could sail east to Ayesh (pop 40k) or Sadiyeh (pop 14.5k), to stock up, but you'd be adding 500 miles to your trek to get to the edge of the Meraz and the smaller Sadiyeh might not have what you need or might charge a premium.

You could go around the southern end of that penninsula and go as far as Heger (pop 12.5k) or Husanah (pop 14k, not a port city) in Al-Zabrit, but crossing 200 extra miles of desert belonging to the native horse tribes might complicate your journey in addition to the issues smaller population towns have when it comes to supplies.

Which leaves the 'best' way: Katheer (pop 132k). Landing in Katheer, you're going to be able to get the best deal on supplies. You can travel 250ish miles upriver on the Pashman to a natural pass between the Northern and Southern Zho mountains, and then another 230ish miles in the highlands (importantly not desert) to reach the western edge of the Meraz, starting the real journey much closer to the Parchlands than coming in from the south.

Perfect! Thank you so much for the detailed description. That was 100% exactly what I needed!

Death #8 (another Hero Point save but still a death)...

Name: Archie
Class: Bard 17
Adventure: Into the Wormcrawl Fissure
Location: Thessalar's Fortress
Catalyst: Wail of the Banshee

Gory Details:

Hey all!
So I'm getting prep'ed to run this AP next, and I -like some others- am having some trouble figuring out where the Parchlands are supposed to be. Nearest I'm figuring, they're south/southeast of Qadira beyond the Meraz Desert.
In that regard, is the reference to returning to Katheer on pg 6 just a misprint? It makes zero sense to go from Okeno, north back to Katheer to launch the expedition only to go back to the south to go beyond the Meraz Desert. Unless Katheer is the only place to get supplies for the journey to the Parchlands, but it looks like there are numerous better options for cities south, along the coast of Qadira.
Thanks for any help that can be provided!

This weekend we continued racing towards the completion of "Return of the Runelords". Continued working through Book 6 and started fixing paradoxes (I'll keep it vague to avoid spoilers).

I will say I'm a bit surprised by the lethality of this campaign. We've had 8 character deaths so far... and that's not counting "save from death" boons. That's second only to our non-mythic "Wrath of the Righteous" campaign which had a whopping 14 deaths... though those deaths were all avoided by Hero Points.

Just something to consider for others considering this AP. Otherwise, it's a fantastic adventure and story! Absolutely loving it!

Toshy wrote:

Brazen question, might your Age of Worms PF conversion be something you're willing to share or do you want to keep it to your own (understandable considering the work it must have taken)?

Absolutely! I have no problem sharing it at all! Mostly, I just used the excellent stat document that Sc8rpi8n_mjd put together and made available on the following thread:

link

I'll be honest, D&D 3.5 and PF 1 are so close, I made a lot of the changes on the fly that I needed to beyond that document. If you have any specific questions about location changes I made to move things to Golarion, I can certainly start a thread over on AoW subforum. Just lemme know!

This weekend finished up the 3rd (of 4) arcs to my Pathfinder Age of Worms game. Despite several more VERY close calls in "Book 10: King of the Rifts" (Brazz is one tough red dragon! And that was AFTER the Mother of Worms almost got them!) there were no further deaths.

As previously requested (back in... July?? Where does the time go...) I started a lessons learned thread for my Age of Worms in Golarion campaign. Feel free to take a look and ask any questions there if you'd like!

Link!

Now I get to enjoy a return to the player's seat for a while and finish up Book 5 & 6 of our "Return of the Runelords" game. I gotta say, ReotRL has been really good! I never heard much about it when it came out. Kinda just slipped by I think. But it's really good! I highly recommend it.

Then it'll be back to finish up Age of Worms in a couple months.
Cheers!

Book 10: King of the Rifts
- So it was a return to the Acadamae in Korvosa and a quick bit of research through books that Toff swore didn’t have details in them before. I needed a nice mountain location for the giant city, not too far from the location of the Worm War on the Whistling Plains. I didn’t know of TOO much going on in the World’s Edge Mountains, so that was the lucky location. - I had a canyon cut in from the eastern side of the mountain range, running west before turning south into a large box canyon. About 300 feet deep between several large peaks, this let me have the giant city about 200 feet up above the canyon and keep the orientation of the map the same. This was also a fairly tucked away area that wouldn’t be discovered except by the giant tribes of the mountain range.
- This was a pretty straightforward one to run. All the conversion stats are present.
- I added that the giants had set up big barrels of oil burning along the edge of the upper city. These produced big clouds of black smoke. Added with setting fire to several wagons and the fires set by dragon breath it semi-concealed much of the city in smoke. I did this so the PCs couldn’t immediately just teleport to the Citadel at the end and so the first flight of dragons the PCs fought didn’t trigger a chain pull of every dragon fighting near the city. That would have been way too much for my group. Instead, I told them it was very difficult to make out details beyond 60-80 feet due to the smoke. That also just so happened to be about the distance between encounter areas that I played fast and loose with.
- I’d say try to give a sense of urgency by repeatedly destroying locations. By the end of the first night, have the gate tower at A be destroyed. Then have the tower at K destroyed the next day. Then the big one, when the dragons finally crack through J. Make it really seem like all of Dragotha’s dragons that flew in from the Rift Canyon are making real progress.
- As for the phylactery, I said that it was so powerful that it had its own soul. Thus they made a plan to run in, grab it and teleport away that I told them wouldn’t work because it was more like a creature that would resist them than an object. Bad news: I also ruled that the paladin could smite it as an undead so that ended the phylactery fairly quickly. LOL.
- I will say, I skipped the whole return of Alastor Land’s ghost and the vaati bloodline angle. That just seemed a bit too much “Chosen One” (drink!) to me. Instead, I had them find the information needed from pg 82 in the many books that Vercinabex Tor had collected. These were first hand books left by the stone giant druids, so I figured they’d have almost any adventure details remaining in there.

On to book 11
This is going to be at the northern end of the Windswept Wastes of course, where I put the Rift Canyon. At the far western end is the Wormcrawl Fissure.
And then from there, on to book 12 which of course will take place back in Alhaster where the spire will have been suddenly completed.

Book 9: Library of Last Resort
- So Lashonna gets to tell them about the Order of the Storm and that they had their headquarters on a small island off the coast of what was once Lirgen. 25 miles off the coast to be exact, which of course in the Eye of Abendego. I figured an unassuming rocky island here wouldn’t attract too much attention… especially just inside the hurricane.
- While scrying on Darl they of course see the Hand of Vecna. Since there is no god Vecna in PF, I kept this related to Norgorber. Darl is a priest of Norgorber and Vecna was a powerful lich that served Norgorber. When the lich died, his hand was turned into a powerful artifact of the god of secrets. My Greyhawk players chuckled but were cool with the change.
- The good news is, since my group already sailed down here to get to Kuluth-Mar, they could do a teleport run to Drenchport. Then it was a tense sailing voyage along the edge of the hurricane. I had them able to get within eyesight of the island with some good piloting rolls so a teleport jump to the beach was then an option.
- I really liked how Sc8rpi8n_mjd stat blocks focused far more on a First World approach. Once they arrived at the demiplane of Last Resort, I had the PCs make a decent Knowledge (planes) check to note that this demiplane was very close to the First World along with the no access to the Astral Plane. This gave a great excuse for the vibrant explosions of life, the large animals and fey Tanes that make up the tests.
- The stats files include other creatures you can include on the island if you want. I didn’t.
- I had to tone down the fight with the Wild Watcher a bit. The cloak’s disarm attempt and catch projectiles once per character per round was a bit much. I changed it to once per round… period.
- Entering the fountain of dreams of course takes the PCs to the past where they experience the final fight of the Worm War. It’s on a hill on the southern edge of the Whistling Plains overlooking the Windswept Wastes beyond. I let them know from the start that they had a sense of déjà vu… that these events had all already happened. That way they wouldn’t spend their precious hero points nor be too upset when that horrifying boneyard shows up to kill them all.
- That pretty much wraps book 9 after finding out that the phylactery was hidden in Kongen-Thulnir.

Book 8: Prince of Redhand
- So back to Toff at the Acadamae who’s research with Celeste and Eligos has revealed the involvement of Balakarde and Lashonna. So it’s off to the Kingdom of Redhand. I placed Redhand on the north shores of Kallas Lake, between the Sellen River and the East Sellen River. Alhaster itself, the one and only large settlement of Redhand, overlooks Kallas Lake.
- All of the stats in this book have been rebuilt. So nothing to worry about there.
- In the city, the chapel of St. Cuthbert again becomes a chapel of Abadar. The Ruby Spire to Wee Jaz becomes the Gray Spire to Pharasma. Hextor becomes Asmodeous.
- I also changed the “Free Lords Embassy” (area 19) to the “Outlaw Embassy”. Zeech kept it for visiting members of the Outlaw Council but it was usually empty… a source of much embarrassment for Zeech who didn’t like to be ignored by the other River Kingdoms.
- I also had to remove any “slave” references because Redhand was in the River Kingdoms and the River Freedoms. So they just became indentured servants that were essentially slaves. This worked out just fine for the workers stuck out in the glories and the quarries supplying the stones for the Great Project.
- What I did for the banquet was print out every guests’ picture and break things up into “turns”. The PCs could influence one guest as they move between events or at each event (if they weren’t involved in the actual event). That way I could move their mini onto the guest’s picture as a reminder of who they were interacting with. When they’d maxed the guest out as helpful, I’d put an H on the picture. Just so the PCs could keep track.

As for each guest, I made a lotta changes there.
- Prince Zeech- I changed him to a prior paladin of Iomedae who fought in the Worldwound from Mendev. He grew tired of mismanaged and badly planned battle plans and wanted to be in charge. He abandoned the war effort 20 years ago and conquered Alhaster using his military genius and using Quemps’s barbarians.
- I had Kilraven be the Redhand Captain of the Guard. Kept things a little simpler.
- Miszen I had be a spy from Daggermark. Alhaster was a small kingdom, but at a critical junction on Kallas Lake. The Outlaw Council, that have frequently ignored Zeech, didn’t like what they were hearing about this Great Project that he’d become obsessed with.
- Shag got changed because there’s no quaggoth in PF. So he became a very shaggy mongrelman from the Emporium. Otherwise no change.
- Toris was a nobleman merchant from Daggermark that was the lowest ranking member of a family who was told they had to send SOMEONE to Zeech’s celebration. I had him saying “I’m not even supposed to BE HERE today!” a whole lot.
- Bkruss, Vjuss and the Redhand Knights I had be mercs that worked for Zeech. They clashed frequently with the elf forces north in the Cordelon forests.
- Vulras I had be the Redhand Warden. He was in charge of all the wardens and security in the countryside around Alhaster and the Glories villages.
- I added in Okral as well as Tirra as guests at the banquet. Okral because they never got a proper show down with him and Tirra my PCs were friendly with her. She was sent because the Night Blades were angry that Okral performed an assassination in “their” city. Tirra was sent to get revenge.

- Most of the rest of the book I ran as is. I changed the Lively Baiting event a bit. I have players who work with a rescue for feral cats, so these obviously became dire rats instead. I also didn’t want the other players to get bored, so there were 6 cockatrice rings that would be used, not just Zeech and one other.
- At the party, if need be, among the servants have a number of low level priests casting undetectable alignment on guests and such. That way if you need Lashonna to have a mind blank running, it won’t tip anyone off as being out of the ordinary. You might have her with a permanent Appearance of Life spell running as well if you want to keep up the game or if you happen to have a soul seer tiefling with death watch running constantly.

Book 7: Spire of Long Shadows
- So, here’s where I really had to decide on the overarching timeline and Kyuss’ background. Specifically, why had no one heard of him or any of these events before in Golarion history?

Golarion History of Kyuss
- I decided that about -6500 AR, when Xin and all his followers left Azlanti to go north and founded Thassilon, another Azlanti was exiled, though this event was VASTLY overshadowed in the history books by the other. A very charismatic priest was kicked out of Azlant for unnatural experimentation with undead. He was a devout follower of Urgathoa and was sent into the wilds of the Mwangi.
- The young priest Kyuss made contact with the locals and the very charismatic man was able to trick them into worshipping him and enslaved them to his will. He had them build Kuluth-Mar in the Jungle of Hungry Trees just south of the Korir River. Why the Jungle of Hungry Trees? Well it’s a jungle and nothing else was going on way down there that I knew about. Easy to slip into Golarion.
- Alternately, you could have Kyuss be a cannibal follower of Zura I suppose. Either way works. He just has to be a very charismatic priest.
- From there he met with the undead spellweaver, who I changed to a dimensional traveler in PF. Kyuss learned how to ascend to become a powerful demon lord using the lifeforce off all his enthralled followers and got trapped in the monolith. From there, the ordeal of the ascension caused him to slumber for nearly 2000 years (through Earthfall, the Age of Darkness and into the Age of Anguish.)
- In approx. -4000 AR, Kyuss started to stir. Slowly his undead followers began to wake and wander into the surrounding jungles.
- At the end of the Age of Anguish, Old Mage Jatembe and his Ten Warriors bring magic back. One of the groups that were trained by them was a group of druids who worshipped Gozreh on the shores of what at the time would become Lirgen. This of course was to become the Order of the Storm.
- At about -3400 AR (ish), the Order of the Storm working with the native Eku’Jae elves are threatened by the undead spreading out from Kuluth-Mar. Working together, they push the undead back and create the obsidian ring around the city.

- The next step was figuring out where the Rift Canyon was going to be. I liked the idea of the Wormcrawl Fissure still being off of this so I decided to place it far in the east at the northern edge of the Windswept Wastes.
- So! During the Age of Destiny, I went with -2900 AR ish, the red dragon Dragotha has fled from Tiamat’s service, heard Kyuss’s whispering and took the monolith over the walls of Kuluth-Mar. He flew far to the east and made his lair in the western fringes of the (newly added) Rift Canyon. I’m glad there’s no detailed maps of the Windswept Wastes yet because there’s now a 200-mile-long canyon there I added at the northern end along the mountains there. I know somewhere further south/southeast there’s the dreaded Pit of Gormuz, but to the north there’s the Rift Canyon now.
- Anyway, Dragotha manages to free a small portion of the demon lord Kyuss, enough to make an avatar. Kyuss begins to teach Dragotha the strange techniques he’s learned in the dimension beyond the monolith where he’s been trapped. He teaches Dragotha how to become a true dragon lich – a dracolich if you will- instead of just a ravager (the PF equivalent). Tiamat’s followers catch up to Dragotha and kill him. With the prep work they’d begun, Kyuss raises Dragotha as the one and only true dracolich on Golarion and makes him his Herald. This covers the rarity of the dracolich and also keeps me from having to make him a ravager instead.
- So then Dragotha and Kyuss build up an army of undead and about -2800 AR they come storming out of the Rift Canyon in the Windswept Wastes in what I dubbed the Worm War because I love alliteration. They drive the nomadic tribesmen before them and begin destroying the small villages to the north in the Whispering Plains. The plains tribesmen and their stone giant allies in the nearby World’s Edge Mountains call their druid allies far to the west. The Order of the Storm arrives, steals the phylactery and works with the tribesmen and stone giants to hold off the attack (with a band of heroes that arrives next book). They then drive Kyuss’ avatar back into the monolith since it’s not the Age of Worms yet.
- So by moving the last fight against Kyuss to the Windswept Wastes and Whistling Plains, it explains why no one in the Inner Sea region is very aware of it. Also the ritual that hid the phylactery could also have affected the Worm War as well.

Anyway, back to Book 7!
- The PCs go the Acadame where they meet up with Celeste again and are pleasantly surprised to find Eligos alive and well. Obviously after Book 5, Toff has his old student Resurrected to assist him in the coming research. I left Agath out. He’s a Greyhawk character and I didn’t see any reason to include him with Celeste and Eligos already.
- Did I mention I like epic journeys? I didn’t like the idea of the picture of Kuluth-Mar, teleport and POOF you’re at the next dungeon. I had Balakarde’s notes mention a large stone arch justeast of the Korir River delta region where the waterways merge into the main river. This marked the road that once led south to the city, back in Kuluth-Mar’s height. So the PCs sailed from Korvosa down along the coast, through the Shackles to Port Freedom. From there, they hire River Guild guides who wouldn’t wait at a camp for the PCs without Ivory Cross mercs. Then they barge up through the Korir River delta region to the main Korir River. They find the overgrown arch and follow the ruined road 10 miles due south into the (now) trackless wilderness to the valley with Kuluth-Mar in it.
Or just teleport through the painting. It’s up to you.
- All of the creatures here have rebuild stats so that’s great.
- In Kuluth-Mar I didn’t change much except some of the visions as I’ve spelled out above.
- Human priest Kyuss had a holy symbol of Urgathoa in the vision.
- I spread out the dungeon levels to make the whole thing less crammed together. Added some longer passages between the chambers and added more than one door into each room. I also didn’t like the three other Kyuss knights sitting on their asses in their room while the place was getting attacked. They moved out and rallied the defenders to a counterattack, using the (now connecting) corridors to hit the party from multiple directions… like genius tacticians should.
- As others have said, also maybe move the Harbringer out into the main overworm chamber to have room to fly around. At least give him a MUCH bigger chamber.
- Consider at the end of the book giving a full hero point for each vision experienced instead of just a reroll. The “avoid death” of a couple hero points is huge in this AP with some pretty deadly encounters.

Anyway, on to Book 8!

Book 6: A Gathering of Winds
- I already covered how I started this book off with the Battle for Diamond Lake. Here it is if you want to look at it again. Link!
- Then they headed up to the Whispering Cairn where they fought Ilthane, who I had bumped up to an old black dragon. Sorry, I like my dragon’s huge at this level. Horse sized dragons just seem a bit small for boss encounters.
- Continuing with the theme from Whispering Cairn, I changed Icosiel’s tomb to being of Azlanti architecture. The Azlanti up here in Varisia watching the serpentfolk at Viperwall built the cairns in gratitude to the Vaati that helped them.
- Most of the rest of the adventure was pretty straight forward with the PF conversions available.
- I changed the “true ghoul” Moretto to being from Nemret Noktoria, the civilized ghoul city in the Darklands under Osirion. Yeah he was a LONG way from home up in Varisia, but my PCs didn’t question it.
- After the Battle of Diamond Lake, Mayor Neff is left dead and Smenk is either dead or arrested (and likely to be sent back to Korvosa to be hung as a traitor). The garrison takes over temporarily but soon places “the smartest man in diamond lake” in charge, Allustan as the new mayor. This is a good way to keep Allustan busy and out of the rest of the adventure. Plus the PCs have out leveled him anyway.
- Allustan recommends they go speak with his old mentor, the headmaster of the Acadamae, Magemaster Toff Ornelos. I used Toff as the stand in for Manzorian/Tenser. I wasn’t 100% happy with that stand it, but there’s a shortage of high-level wizards in Golarion, and even less that are good aligned and would be adequate patrons of the PCs. So Toff works.

Book 5: Champion’s Games
- So here we have the Champion’s Games, the main setting for this book. For me the obvious choice was the Serpent’s Run Arena at Magnimar. So how to fit it in? Well there are monthly gladiator fights put on as shows by the city guard (from the Magnimar City of Monuments sourcebook). But once a year (for the past ten years) anyone can enter an event called the “Champion’s Games”, a chance for anyone to win big prizes. It’s put on by an ex-gladiator/city guard Loris Raknian. Magnimar’s arena has a pretty strict no-bloodsports policy, so Raknian got around that by having priests standing around the playing field with “stabilize” spells ready to go. Anyone that goes down automatically gets a stabilize tossed on them. Plus, Raknian argued that folks could surrender and give up at any time. His games were NOT supposed to be a fight to the death, but accidents could (and did) happen. This was still considered acceptable for the amount of money the games brought in.
- With the Apostolic Scrolls in the possession of Raknian, the group was set to infiltrate the Champions Games.
- At the dinner they were excited to meet up with Tirra again. They’d grown to like her and I made sure to extend the invitation to the Night Blades (the biggest Magnimar thieves guild) if things worked out.
- For the early fight, I just used the 3.5 stats. I added an extra archer to the elves and an extra gnoll to the druid’s team. This wasn’t supposed to be a super tough fight after all. I had some fun fleshing out the other teams in the cenoby but had pre-determined who was going to win anyway of course. Just the same, the PCs enjoyed interacting with them down in the cenoby below Serpent’s Run Arena. I’m not sure if that’s actually in Magnimar lore, but it seemed an easy insertion.
- For the temple of Kyuss below the Coenoby, I used the 3.5 stats for the tiefling cleric and the alkilith demon as well. Careful of the demon too. At CR 14 he was tough at this level. Stinking cloud at will and cloudkill form meant a lot of saves each round. Consider making the chambers a little bit bigger to account for this.
- Also, I wasn’t going to let the PCs handle the trapped ulgurstasta prior to the big finale. They recognized the artifact nature of the Apostolic Scrolls and that it had something sealed in very dangerous but there was little they could do at the moment.
- For the Pitch Blade fight, I grabbed a level 10 dwarf barbarian from the PFSRD. I also added a third brother to Pitch Blade. This made for a fairly challenging fight.
- For the finale, I had Dourstone up on the main balcony overseeing the action where he’d been sitting with Raknian during the competition. He seemed nervous with no Raknian present.
- I did a mini-rebuild to Auric’s Warband, adding the extra feats to Auric and adding HP to Khallek. Added an extra flesh golem to them too.
- I let my PCs fight them for a few rounds (taking out a few golems) before the ulgurstasta burst up. Then it was a crazy free for all. Raknian ran up yelling about sacrificing the champions while holding his rod of cancellation. Dourstone and Raknian joined in, their personal guards joined in. Tirra joined in from the sidelines. Good times had by all.
- The only one who didn’t join in the fun was Okral. He was busy killing Eligos and then fleeing up to his true boss, Zeech in Redhand who had sent him to spy on Ilthane and the Ebon Triad and then he followed Dourstone to Magnmar. Make sure that Okral carves out and takes Eligos’ heart to stop Raise Dead and Speak with Dead. Resurrection is probably more than the PCs are willing to pay at this moment.
- They ended up killing Dourstone and Raknian. Raknian’s holdings were seized by Magnimar and sold to pay off ALL bets since there was no clear winner then it was declared that Magnimar’s annual Champion’s Games were shut down.

Book 4: Halls of Harsh Reflections
- I had the Free City stand in be Magnimar. This was mostly because I knew I wanted the arena in Book 5 to be the Serpent’s Run Arena. Plus, I own the Magnimar City of Monuments sourcebook and there’s PLENTY of side adventures if folks were interested.
- The PCs had their own lead here with the peace negotiations. Allustan also asked them to speak with an old classmate of his in Magnimar, Eligos. It finally came out that Allustan had been a top student at the Acadamae in Korvosa before deciding to come to Diamond Lake to try and help the miners living in squalor. One of his good friends and classmates was Eligos who traveled to Magnimar.
- I had Eligos’ manor up in the Alabaster district, not too far from Sheila Heidmarch’s place. He had contacts at the Crooked House which I put down in the Dockway District, not far from the Bazaar of Sails.
- The group also had another side quest. Moonmeadow really wanted his ship back that Dourstone had taken off in. The group found out about a squibbing location in the Underbridge District, coincidently not far from Sodden Hold, the hideout where some dopplegangers were dwelling.
- So! Let’s address the aberration in the room. Obviously mindflayers aren’t a PF thing. So, when Zyrzog makes his appearance upon exiting Sodden Hold you have a couple options.
a. Replace him with something else (probably an aboleth) or
b. Use him as is.
I went with B. I had a high Knowledge (dungeoneering) remember that aboleths experimented with a number of bioengineered creatures. This creature was obviously a unique result of such an experiment (I think my players ended up calling it a “brain ripper” for fun, since we couldn’t say mind flayer). Then I grabbed a couple drow fighters from the PFSRD to cover Zyrzog’s dramatic withdrawal.
- For the second part of the adventure, I had the Cold Forge weapon shop in the Lowcleft District, not far from the Seacleft cliffs. I had the old sewers run underneath the Seacleft towards the far side of the city. Then they dropped down into the series of caves that made up Zyrzog’s hideout.
- from the PFSRD I grabbed stats for Drow House Guard to include as well as Drow Noble Cleric. I also added in a couple giant black widows for melee blockers in the caves.
- Having the octopins in the lab be created by Zyrzog just backed up the bioengineered origin of the “brain ripper” as well. This detail was appreciated by my players. They all traced their origins back to the aboleth.
- In Zyrzog’s notes I included how he’d been searching underwater through the old Azlanti ruins off the coast looking for the Apostolic Scrolls to sell to a buyer (of course leading into Book 5). In return, he would get several teams of miners for some excavation job.
- Why the excavation? Well my PCs had fallen behind again even with a few goblin encounters in the Magnimar sewers. I added a level below Zyrzog’s chambers at M14. It went into the aboleth tower in the PF module “From Shore to Sea” and down to the dungeon where an aboleth was trapped in an observation post from long ago when the aboleth had been hiding below Magnimar and keeping an eye on the Runelords of Thassilon. This one got trapped during Earthfall and was hibernating. Zyrzog found the aboleth and was trying to dig him an escape route to sea.
All of that part you can ignore if you want. Unless you want to strengthen the mindflayer/aboleth connection some more.

Book 3: Blackwall Keep
- I placed Blackwall Keep west of Lake Syrantula down the Yondabakari River. It was on the south bank of the river (a bit further down than the town of Whistledown) to keep trade open up and down the river to Magnimar and make sure any tribes of lizardfolk from the Mushfens didn’t attack shipping coming into the Lake.
- I kicked this book off with an animal messenger sent from Marzeena. In my game, I had Marzeena as the previous apprentice to Allustan. Allustan took in the new arcane caster (one of the PCs) and Marzeena graduated. She left for Korvosa to join the Korvosan Guard as a battle wizard. From there she was assigned to Blackwall Keep.
- Couple of options here. You can have the PCs hop on a ship and sail down the Lake, down the River to Blackwall if you want. Mention that the Blackwall Keep’s boats have been sunk pier side during the lizardfolk attack if you want.
- OR, I like journeys. I added a small pass through the Fenwall Mountains just southwest of Diamond Lake. This pass is actually what the Bronzewood Lodge guards. So, I had Dourstone take Moonmeadow’s ship and disappear to Magnimar and the Green Lady cult’s ship (the Harkness) was off getting supplies. This left nothing but an overland trip for the party. So through the mountains, along the edge of the foothills above the Mushfens and finally through the swamps along the river to arrive at the Keep. Lots of fun outdoors encounters and time for any outdoors characters to shine.
- The rest of this book is fairly straightforward. Book 3 is where Sc8rpi8n_mjd starts his fantastic stat document.

Link! .

- If they’re willing to negotiate with Hishka, have her tell them how the farmers from Magnimar are starting to expand into traditional lizardfolk hunting grounds along the Yondabakari River and Mushfens. They can help her by taking out the tribe chief and negotiating a peace for the lizardfolk tribes.
- Make sure to describe the alchemically modified lizard king and kobolds as having black scales. You want to foreshadow Ilthane’s involvement for sure.
- Finish up with a rest at the Keep while the garrison fixes one of their boats and they can sail back to Diamond Lake along the southern shore of Lake Syrantula. If you have a group that likes to negotiate, you’ll probably already have your next lead in Magnimar. My PCs liked Marzeena so I had her take some leave from the Korvosa Guard and come back to aid in Allustan’s research.

Book 2: Three Faces of Evil
- This one obviously still takes place under Dourstone’s mine in town. No big changes there.
- I used someone’s suggestion to kick this adventure off by using Smenk. Keep him in the forefront of town politics. He arranged for the PCs to be arrested for breaking into his property at the Observatory at the end of last book. If they’ll go investigate the cult under Dourstone’s mines, he’s willing to forget about the charges… and nothing horrible will happen to any of their family of course. I loved keeping Smenk as an untouchable jerk. Made the revenge against him in book 6 oh so much better.
- The only big decision here was WHO are the gods of the Ebon Triad? I went with the suggestion made by someone on the boards that…
Hextor = Asmodeus
Erythnul = Rovagug
And Vecra = Norgorber
The reasoning they posed went: Rovagug is locked away. Asmodeus sealed him away. And Norgorber knows the secrets of how he did it. Also Asmodeus replacing Hextor in Book 8 as being worshipped by Prince Zeech’s works great.

STATS
- I continued to use mostly the 3.5 stats given in this adventure. Unless of course I had the PF stats from the PFSRD such as dire boar, allip, etc. Feel free to give Theldrick his channel negative ability if you want to give him a nice AoE blast.
- In the caves of Rovagug (Erythnul), grimlocks are out (not a PF thing) and I switched them with morlocks. Be careful here. Morlocks pack quite a punch for their CR with their climb speed, leap attack and swarming. I used the numbers from the book, but my PCs needed an extra rest to get through the caves.
- In the labyrinth of Norgorber (Vecna), obviously the kenku become tengu. Bump the rogue HP a bit, give em a couple rogue talents and I called it a day. Used their 3.5 stats for equipment.
- Also in the labyrinth, remember the dire weasels are now large in PF. They were medium in 3.5. They have compression so it’s not really an issue for moving and fighting, but something to remember.
- I used the 3.5 stats for Faceless One and his acolytes. Kept it simple.
- The fallout from Book 2 can be a lot of fun if your PCs are invested in the town. I had Dourstone flee town for Magnimar to get outside of Korvosa jurisdiction. He was tried as a traitor in absentia by the Garrison. Everyone KNEW Smenk was involved, but he had all the witnesses to say he was being threatened. So, he managed to get off without so much as a slap on the wrist.

Book 1: The Whispering Cairn
- So the kick off to this one is kind of weak. It’s really the only bad part of this adventure. You may need to just give the PCs a “cut scene” where Auric’s band is in town looking for riches, the PCs remember the Whispering Cairn and pick up outside the entrance.

Some changes I made…
- Swarms at level 1 are brutal. I put some empty broken bottles of alchemist fire near the wolf den at the entrance as a “hint hint” for my PCs. They picked up on it and bought some more alchemist fire… “just in case”.
- I had the whole tomb be of Azlanti design that they could identify with good Knowledge rolls.
- The Vaati were an ancient (now extinct) air elemental race. The Wind Dukes were their elite warriors. I had this info available at Allustan’s library after some research.
- Nadroc from the Architect wing was an Azlanti architect of some renown. He built the cairns dedicated to the Wind Dukes.
- I changed the grick (a WotC monster) to a thoqqua that had burrowed into the piles of iron spheres.
- The True Tomb was where I had to come up with my first big story change. I decided that after the Azlanti defeated the serpentfolk at Saventh-Yhi, the Azlanti established a small outpost up here in the north to keep watch on the serpentfolk that had fled to establish their stronghold of Viperwall. Deep under Viperwall, the serpentfolk made an alliance with an ancient Qlippoth Lord named Mishka the Wolf Spider. Her countless qlippoth followers allied with the serpentfolk that summoned them and they made preparations to again carve an empire on the surface world in Varisia. The Azlanti here made contact with an ancient elemental race the Vaati. They sent a force to aid the Azlanti under the command of the Wind Duke General Icosiel. The two forces clashed in a mighty battle near the north shores of Lake Syrantula, an area once called the Fields of Pesh. The serpentfolk and their qlippoth allies were defeated and the serpentfolk fled back into Viperwall to slumber. In gratitude, the Azlanti built a series of hidden cairns under Varisia dedicated to their Vaati allies. One of the greatest Wind Duke heroes who fought in the battle was Zosiel, who died in the fighting and whose tomb they were in now. All of this the PCs found out in the smoke images around the chamber.
- I also had them find out that the staff that General Icosiel was holding was an ancient Azlanti artifact knowns as the “Staff of Seven Virtues of Rule”. It was originally the “Staff of Law” when the vaati gave it to their Azlanti allies up here, but it was divided into seven parts.

STATS
- For the mad slasher, I just used the 3.5 stats. At this low level I wasn’t super worried. He had whirlwind attack and that’s about it, so I just went with that.
- Same with the acid beetle swarm. I just used 3.5 stats.
- At the observatory, I think I continued to use 3.5 stats out of the adventure. The tomb mote was tricky being a bit tough to hit.
- I had a 5-man table, so they were a little behind in xp. I added more skeletal crossbowmen in the front room and had the zombie “dinner party” attack as well.
- In the operating room upstairs, I added SRD troglodyte zombies that I “reskinned” as lizardman zombies (as a preview of things to come in Book 3 with the lizardmen)
- Also make sure to give Filge a couple more HP since wizards are d6s now, instead of d4s.
- The wind warriors in the True Tomb I also just used the 3.5 versions. They were plenty tough enough as is.
- As far as research into the strange green worm they find, later on (I think book 2 or 3) I had research books arrive from Korvosa. They were able to determine the worm was from a very rare form of undead, the spawn of Kyuss. Kyuss himself was a very old and nearly unknown demon lord from long ago. I changed Kyuss from god to demon lord since in PF killing a god is a BIG deal. Defeating a demon lord is much less so and this still fits just fine in the AP.

Uh… think that’s in for book 1. On to book 2!

Since it’s been requested, I’ll catalog my own PF conversion notes in this thread. From the start, I’ll say that my table plays the Adventure Paths in a unified campaign Golarion and they really enjoy all the lore. So, one of my goals was to slip the AoW AP in without stepping on any (or at least much) established Golarion/Pathfinder canon.

Characters/Player’s Guide
- The first choice was where to put Diamond Lake. Someone else on the board made note that having it be a vasal of the (previously) Lawful Evil(ish) city of Korvosa made sense. I went with that idea. I placed Diamond Lake on the southern shore of Lake Syrantula. Adding a small town tucked in on the far side of the Fenwall Mountains isn’t lore breaking or anything.

- I intertwined Diamond Lake’s History with that of Korvosa and the surrounding lands of Varisia. Obviously, the below are our results from “Curse of the Crimson Throne” so anyone that wanted to use this history would just have to add in their own results if you wanted.

History of Diamond Lake (spoiler for length)

As far as Campaign Traits went, I know some folks have designed their own. I just let my players pick an extra trait and connect it in some way to why they’re stuck in Diamond Lake.
Then I included a player’s map of Diamond Lake and a slightly sterilized player’s version of the town information from the Backdrop article. I had to make a couple changes…

- Obviously I had to realign the town. The water was now to the north of the town, so I flipped the compass rose.
- Several folks on the boards have done great conversions from Greyhawk gods to Golarion gods. I went with the cult of St Cuthbert now being a crazed cult of Abadar. I had them going around town giving penance to Abadar by whipping themselves in repetitive acts of self-mortification. Since man is incapable of adhering to Abadar’s holy Law, only through self-flagellation can they purify themselves. It seemed strange and cult-y enough to give the impression that Diamond Lake is far from civilization.
- Similar, I kept the Cult of the Green Lady and just changed it from Wee Jaz (the Ruby Lady) to Pharasma (the Gray Lady). Easy switch. And these cultists worship Pharasma from an obscure devotional referring to her appearing to mortals as a green-eyed woman, thus this group worships Pharasma as the Green Lady.
- Obviously Heironeous was an easy switch to Iomedae at the Garrison chapel. Done.
Those were about the only changes I remember from the town itself.

Wrath of the Righteous

After 43 sessions, we finished running my non-mythic Wrath game.
If I get time, I'll make a "lessons learned" thread about changes I made. But first I've got to finish the players' guide for my next game: Age of Worms, PF1 version.

Hey all!

Out of curiosity's sake. Did you do the dragon attack at the beginning as written?

I did the attack at the end as they made their way to the citadel. It seemed like a proper ending

I did the dragon "commander" attacks at the locations recommended in the adventure:

So yes! I did do one of the attacks on the way to the citadel as well. Oddly enough, they just finished the fight with Xyzanth and Vermirox today.

On another note, I'll add the dragon fights have been slooooow. So much flying combat and pre-cast buffs and spellcasting and uggh. LOL. I've only been able to get 3-4 of these encounters in for each 5-hour session. At least they've been fun, despite all the work.

Book 6

- After doing the kingdom thing for another month, I had them train up their armies and generated a few demon armies for some mass combat action. The opposition was of course dreadfully overmatched for the outnumbered Drezen defenders, so the PCs knew it would be up to them to take out the demon leadership. They survived one round of mass combat then took out the nalfeshnees attackers. Then they survived another round of mass combat and tackled the invading locust demons and Apovicious. That caused the demons to fall back.
- Aaaand then things started going a bit sideways with the adventure. First you had the Yearning House where the entire building was essentially one big combat. Fighting starts in the debauchery and then everyone else (except Sister Perversion) piles on in. Roll initiative for everyone. This was a daunting fight but a fun one. Meeting Nocticula and beating up Sister Perv felt like a bit of a downswing after the massive brawl before.
- And then things really went downhill. After the upper floors of the Yearning House you have – in fairly quick succession - Mistress Anemora, Terendelev, Lord Stillborn, the Skinned Man and the Storm King. This was where I realized that I was spending waaay more time preparing these fights by looking up what all their abilities were than they were lasting on the game board. I’m only exaggerating a little bit.
- Just the same, the fight against Terendelv was fun. Try to get a game map as big as you can to make sure you can move her around a lot. There’s no reason with her abilities she should be going toe to toe with anyone and slugging it out.
- The Storm King. Oh boy. I think this was the first encounter in the whole AP that would have torn through my non-mythic party. The dual initiatives and mythic power attack meant that a full attack was looking at just a gross amount of damage. With the dual initiative the Storm King got two 5-foot steps before the PC melees could attack and thus couldn’t get their own full attacks. With smite resistance, the paladin was having trouble landing a hit. With the Storm King, I had to really cut back. I essentially stopped using his whip, instead just focusing on the sword attacks. I had him cast chain lightning pretty much every other action and had to cut back on his healing only be ½ of the damage dealt.
- Threshold I ran pretty much as is. I busted out the giant map again for the approach to the roof so the dragon-mounted-raspers became an epic aerial combat. The final fight down on the Roots level was also very epic. Much like the Yearning House there was just a lot of combatants. Overall, the only one I was really worried about was the hekatonkheires titan. Fortunately, I had a sorcerer that recognized that the gated titan was a unique creature and she got in a “diplomacy off” with Areelu to try and out bid the witch to get the titan to leave. That actually turned out to be one of the high points of the final battle since if the titan would have come in on Areelu’s side it would have been game over for the PCs.
- Finally, after taking out Areelu, I had the PCs perform the Worldwould ritual and closed the portal as the finale of the AP. I didn’t think the non-mythic characters would have a whole lot of chance against Deskari himself plus all his guards. Even though the PCs did all finish up at 21st level, Deskari is brutal at CR29. I had them complete the ritual and Deskari reaching out for them before the portal snapped shut.
- As an epilogue, I had all the PCs turned into outsiders to go serve in their gods’ courts except for one that took over as the new Queen of Mendev.

Overall, this was a great AP and was mostly functional as a non-mythic adventure as long as you use Hero Points or some other equalizing measure.
Cheers!

Book 5

- I gave the party a couple months to run their kingdom while the demonic forces were in disarray after Baphomet’s destruction and his forces retreating. The Wintersun hex chose to join them and queen Galfrey gifted them the three hexes up the river. This brought their kingdom up to 10 hexes and a proper barony.
- Have I mentioned I like epic journeys? Once the group set out into the labyrinth, I had them cross through the Ivory Maze and then the Starflower Hedges. I wanted to have them spend some serious time winding through the mazes to give them an idea how truly big they were.
- I told them due to the shifting nature of the mazes, greater teleport would have some limitations. We called it the “WoW approach”. You could only travel to someplace you’d traveled to physically before (much like a World of Warcraft flightpoint). Or you could travel to a companion’s location if you needed to (you can obviously picture your companions well enough) This slowed them down from just teleporting from Blackburgh to the prison.
- Continuing on their epic journey, I had them travel from Blackburgh, down the Meandering River. (mostly so the Shackles characters could use their ship again.) Then I rolled a random maze shift that reconfigured the mazes. I had them wind through a few more zones before finding a route to the Lightless Maze, the hidden route up to the Breathless Mts and the prison. There were just so many cool maze zones that I wanted them to at least get a taste of the cooler ones.
- Since they knew about the Father’s acid blood and most of them were resisting acid, I made a slight change where his blood was epic acid. It either did 6d6 against the unprotected or 2d6 that burned through all normal resistances. This made him feel a bit more dangerous.
- I used other people’s recommendation that even if freed, Alderpash wouldn’t be able to escape the Abyss. I wanted the party to be able to interact with the Runelord, but I knew there was no way my PCs would go for just setting Alderpash free. He explained since he’d spent so long in the Abyss, his once mortal soul was entangled with the structure of the Abyss. So the group made an alliance with him and freed the old Runelord. Alderpash went on to reclaim a corner of the Abyss to carry out his plans.
- Obviously I didn’t have any intension of my non-mythic characters trying to tackle CR27 Baphomet. The story worked out just fine without his direct combat involvement.
- I didn’t have any PCs that worshipped Iomedae, so Queen Galfrey became the new herald. Everyone else got some story related reward as they moved up to Heroic Tier 5 and got a bigger Hero Point pool.

BOOK 4

- Like the previous book, the recommendation is for Queen Galfrey to accompany the PCs into the Midnight Fane. I had her escort the PCs to the Fane and then wait outside to prevent reinforcements from entering as well as guard the other NPCs the group wanted to take with them to the Abyss.
- I’m a big fan of epic journeys. I wanted the trip through the Midnight Islands to feel more epic. I also had a couple characters with pirate backgrounds, so I thought I’d work with that. I said that due to the morphic nature of the Abyss, the islands in the Midnight Islands have a tendency to move making non-greater teleport very difficult. So I had the ritual at the Vazglar shrine “calm” the islands so they wouldn’t move around. Then I added an abandoned town on Vazglar and a sunken ship pierside. A few make wholes later and they were off in their new ship with the NPCs helping to man the ship.
- They had a couple weeks of sailing across the Midnight Sea where I added some fun side adventures then they docked at Alushinyrah. The ship provided them a “home base” to come back to and the NPCs were kept mostly safe staying on the ship. When they needed to move, they sailed the ship up the canals in the city.
- I held off on giving Nocticula’s favors until AFTER clearing the mines. She didn’t seem like the kind to give her reward up front before the job was done.
- The pirate characters were now attached to their ship, so after the meeting with Nocticula, I had her suck the ship down a whirlpool and pop it back up just off the island. They then sailed up the river to the island’s interior.
- I made the fight on the 2nd floor of the mines pretty much all one big encounter due to demon telepathy. Started with the kalavacaus. Then took a couple turns for the foreman and his succubus to grab gear and arrive. Then a couple turns later the teiflings from the barracks at K9 woke up and joined the fight. Then the minotaurs from the mines geared up and flown into the main chamber. The gibrileth demons from the slave pit seemed pretty independent (they have a “run away” morale score, after all) so they stayed out of it and Hepzamirah herself obviously is busy. Altother, this made for a fantastic encounter.
- After the Baphomet/Nocticula encounter is when I had Nocticula arrive and send everyone home and give her boons. (For those curious, she turned the ship into a folding boat so they got to take it with them. Since it’s much less than the 10,000 gp item she can give them, I said that’s fine.)
- Everyone advanced to Tier 4 at the end of the book.

BOOK 3

- Before I started this book, I printed and laminated a poster of the Wounded Lands to hang on the wall. I covered the map with white paper hexes that I could remove as the group explored. This was an idea I heard from someone on the Kingmaker boards and it worked great. So thanks!
- I also had a couple players that really enjoyed the kingdom building and management from Kingmaker, so I added that component. I had Drezen be a 1 hex kingdom that they started with a castle, barracks and the rest ruined/broken buildings to fill out to large town size.
- While the demon offensive was pushing in the south, I had the PCs form their ruling council and gave them 2 months to start rebuilding up the city. They quickly expanded/claimed the 2 hexes down the riverbed to start rebuilding the village of Keeper’s Canyon.
- While I let them use Kingdom rules to build up/repair the blocks of the city, I also let them use the UC Downtime rules to rebuild critical buildings at the same time.
- After the two months, I had all the various NPCs feed them the quest leads that sent them out into the Wounded Lands and the bulk of Book 3. Having to return to Drezen every month for a Ruling Week made them feel important and also slowed down the exploration some. I think the group spent about 2-3 months exploring the many hexes of the Wounded Lands before they reached the level that triggered Arueshalae’s dream.
- Then there was the Ivory Sanctum. Oh boy did I mess that one up. Up until this point I was facing the same issue as Kingmaker: the group knew they’d have only one encounter per hex, so the group was free to go nuclear on it. Even at Arueshalae’s Redoubt the group blazed through with no challenge at all. So, growing a bit frustrated, I hinted that if they attacked the Ivory Sanctum and fell back, the agents there might flee with any usable intel they were looking for. That meant taking the entire Sanctum in one go… and that was just waaay too much. They got through the east wing just fine, but then they crossed over to the west side and were nearly tapped. They kept pushing south and I had to pull the derakni guard post encounter because the party was nearly running on empty. The mythic vrock I had to softball (he had fled from his normal encounter area, and I think I had him flee again at only half hp) and then Xanthir Vang, I had to remove his mythic ranks altogether. So! Bottom line is don’t do what I did! Allow your party to take a couple shots at the Ivory Sanctum. Come up with whatever you want to keep the leadership from fleeing with the intel in question.
- Finally, since the group was still very vested in the Kingdom/UC rules in rebuilding Drezen, I had another force of dretchs and tieflings attack the city so the group could run a Mass Combat battle to reward them for all the defenses they’d been building up around the city.
- Wrapping up the book I had the PCs advance to Tier 3 heroic. They all added an additional Hero Point to their hero point pool.

BOOK 2

- I ran this book pretty much as is as well. My party wasn’t too interested in interacting with “the new guys”, Aron or Sosiel, so I skipped the whole Aron addiction subplot.
- In this book I had the first and second deaths that needed to be saved by hero points so the danger level was still there. Otherwise, the hero points allowed them to feel heroic and they tore through most of the non-boss encounters.
- Despite the recommendation to send Irabeth, Nurah and anyone else the PCs ask to come with them into Citadel Drezen, I only sent Nurah. My group is large enough that I don’t generally allow cohorts so I try to keep extra NPCs out of the initiative rotation and off the battlemat.
- At the end of the book, I had them advance to tier 2 so they got an additional hero point to their pool.

BOOK 1

- I started the adventure off with a big battle in Kenabres square. Each of the characters brought a 5th level “bodyguard” who was assigned to protect them. The bodyguards were of course quickly slaughtered by the arriving hordes of dretches, schirs, and babau demons who arrived with the Storm King. The 1st level squires (the PCs) worked to evacuate the civilians while their guards bravely tried to hold off the demons. They saw Teledrelev clash with the Storm King and get beaten and then an earthquake from the Storm King sent them plunging down below the city.
- Most of the rest of book 1 I ran “as is.”
- Once the characters destroyed the wardstone shard and became “mythic” (or “heroic” as I called it), I gave them a replenishing pool of 3 + tier hero points. So at the end of book 1 they became tier 1 and went into book 2 with 4 hero points that refreshed at a rate of 1 point/day. I also allowed them to use their hero points as mythic points as far as powering their campaign traits went.
- I’ll say that the path of the archmage (refreshing magic item charges with a hero point each day) was crazy powerful. If I ran this AP again, I’d probably put some more limits on this ability.

Oh wow. I finished this campaign back in Aug of 23 and promised I’d put out a lessons learned. My bad. Got sucked into DMing the next campaign. Anyway, here’s (finally) my lessons learned from my non-mythic Wrath of the Righteous game.

So I finally finished Wrath of the Righteous and I thought I’d share some lessons learned. I really wanted to run this story, but I’d heard repeatedly that the mythic rules were pretty broken. So I searched around and found some good suggestions on how to run this as completely non-mythic game. Here’s some of the changes I made as well as some of the problems/shortcomings I ran into.

Character Creation
- I wanted this adventure to feel really epic, so I bumped the date from AR 4717 to AR 4727 and all my players were given the option to run descendants from our other completed Adventure Paths.
- To reflect their superior heritage (and help offset the non-mythic rules I’d be using) I allowed 25 pt builds and everyone started with 8000 gp worth of gear, no more than 4000 gp on one item.
- I also used “fast track” xp. By using fast track on a table of 5 players and not changing the number of enemies in the book, I was able to keep the party approximately 1 level above the recommended level of the books. This allowed them to better face the challenges coming despite being non-mythic.
- Also due to their superior training and to reflect being infused with wardstone power, when they had an ability increase (at 4th, 8th, 12th, and 16th) they got to add a +1 to TWO different scores.
- The group knew from the start that they would be using Hero Points and I would be using Mythic Points and Mythic Abilities for the bad guys. Everyone was good with this understanding from the start.

One Overall Change
- I changed “DR epic” a bit based on a change suggested on the boards. I had DR epic apply against ALL attacks (even attacks that normally bypass all DR) unless the attacker is a Tier equal to or higher than the defender. I put this rule out at the start and all the group was good with it.

Death #7 (mostly)...

Name: Vilipende
Class: Paladin (Sacred Servant) 16
Adventure: King of the Rift
Location: Flatrock Pinnacle
Catalyst: Necrozyte, fiendish green dragon

Gory Details:

Sorry for the necro, but if a PF conversion is still kicking around, I'd love to take a look. Strongly considering it as one of the next ones to run.
PM sent to TBA.
Thanks!

Yeah... I'm not even a PF2 player, but this one might get me to take another look (or convert it to PF1 for my group). Spore War looks really cool. Great job y'all!

Poor Daxum can't catch as a break as he picks up death #6 (kind of) ...

Name: Daxum
Class: Witch (Hedge Witch Healer) 14
Adventure: Library of Last Resort
Location: Maze of Menhirs
Catalyst: Assassin death attack

Gory Details:

I found this somewhere but didn't write down the source.

So in this interpretation, Dragotha's interference is about five hundred years after the erection of the ring.

Oh fantastic find! That's from the "Age of Worms Overload", the web supplement written by Erik Mona, so it's definitely canon.

Anyway, so that's your timeline!

-"2000 years ago" (-1405 cy) Kyuss was a mortal who ascended.
-For "many years" his undead spilled from Kuluth-Mar
-The obsidian ring was built around the city leaving his undead minions trapped for "nearly 2000 years."

-"Hundreds of years later" Dragotha took the monolith containing Kyuss to the Rift Canyon and freed Kyuss.
-"Shortly after," Tiamat killed Dragotha and Kyuss revived him as a dracolich
-Dragotha led Kyuss' armies in conquest "1500 years ago" (-905 cy) and were stopped by the Order of the Storm.

Great research and thank you for the information! I'm running AoW in Golarion and -though I'm changing WHEN events occur- it's great to have things in the right order.
Cheers!

Hey! I don't have many firm answers for you, but the facts given are...

1. Kyuss walked as a mortal 2,000 years ago then ascended (SoLS pg 60)
2. After his ascension, for "many years" undead spilled out of Kuluth-Mar and terrorized the lands (SoLS pg 70)
3. The wall went up and the undead have been trapped for "nearly 2,000 years" (SoLS pg 70)
4. The battle between Dragotha and the Order of Storms was 1,500 years ago (LoLR pg 62)

So! For your answers...

1) How long after Kyuss' attempted ascension did the elves/dakon and eladrins surround the Spire of Long Shadows with the Obsidian Ring?

After "many years". Sometime between 2,000 years ago and "nearly" 2,000 years ago. I think I used 20 or 30 years. That seemed "many years" to me and 1,970 years ago is still "nearly 2,000 years ago. Shrug. Just how I did it.

Was this before, during, or after the Order of the Storm defeated Dragotha?

The wall went up before. It went up "nearly 2,000 years ago" and the battle against the Order of Storms was about 1,500 years ago.

2) When did Dragotha relocate Kyuss' monolith to the Wormscrawl Fissure? Was this before or after the construction of the Obsidian Ring?

I couldn't find any information on this. My assumption has always been that it was AFTER the ring went up. This is based solely on I had assumed that Dragotha flew the monolith over the obsidian ring so Kyuss could escape. With the ring up, none of Kyuss' undead followers would be able to free him after all. I don't think there's really any info on this I could find other than the Vision from SoLS which doesn't give us any indications of when it occurred.

Sorry it's not more help, but it's what I found in my search.
Cheers!!

I'd say the one that did it really well was Wrath of the Righteous. They include the NPC update for each book on the inside cover. Even if they didn't have a major role to play in the rest of the AP, they give you an idea of what they'd be up to. I'd love to see them continue that, but I also understand that's prime real estate.

Have they dealt with Ma'Kar yet?

Yup. They finished up the book and moved on to Redhand.

Ma'kar turned out to be semi anticlimactic. He kept the melee away with repulsion, but then the casters just d-doored the melee in close. Then it was one round of full attacking, smiting, two-handed power attacking paladin that pretty much ended the fight.

Having the final showdown in Ma'kar's closet of a room didn't help either. If I did it again, I'd give Ma'Kar a MUCH bigger chamber to move around in. The repulsion was just insignificant when he couldn't keep the melee at range. Shrug. Live and learn. The players had fun so all good!

And wrapping up the dreaded "Spire of Long Shadow" with death #5...

Name: Daxum
Class: Witch (Hedge Witch Healer) 13
Adventure: Spire of Long Shadows
Location: Sea of Worms
Catalyst: Overworm

Final Count: 5 deaths in the campaign so far, 4 in the Spire of Long Shadows.
Previous Count (from D&D 3.5 version): 6 deaths in the campaign, 3 in the Spire.

Repeat visitor for death #4 for the Age of Worms Pathfinder conversion...

Name: Archie
Class: Bard 12
Adventure: Spire of Long Shadows
Location: Sea of Worms
Catalyst: Way too many flamestrikes from Worm Callers

Double kill for deaths #2 and #3 for the Age of Worms Pathfinder conversion...

Name: Ruso
Class: Monk (Zen Archer) 12
Adventure: Spire of Long Shadows
Location: Halls of Corruption
Catalyst: Corrupted Sword Archon

Name: Archie
Class: Bard 12
Adventure: Spire of Long Shadows
Location: Halls of Corruption
Catalyst: Corrupted Sword Archon

Seems I'm in the minority, but I'd much prefer to see Direct Sequels in the future. Not really a surprise, considering I like the 6-part APs better anyway. My players really get attached to their characters and want to play them all the way to the end (eg. 17-20th level).

And when I say Direct Sequel, I'm assuming this is two shorter arcs that could be played separated or linked together. Kind of like how Serpents Skull was kind of two separate APs: "Race to Saventh Yhi" and "Against the Serpentfolk".

There's a bit in the background you should consider as well. The timeline isn't spelled out exactly when it happens, but in Book 2 under "Meanwhile on the front..." it talks about how a scattering of survivors from western Nirmathas have already arrived at Tamran with the initial reports of monster attacks. Tamran sent an exploration force west along the Tamran Highway to investigate. This force ran into an ambush and was handily defeated by a force MUCH bigger than what they were expecting. With this level of defeat, the city of Tamran is panicking about setting up defenses of the city likely expecting an attack on the capital next (not realizing that the Ironfang Legion will be focusing on the west instead).

So, bottom line is that the city is probably going to be far too busy worried about their own defenses than helping those back in occupied territory at first. They've already lost a good chunk of their military power in the initial ambush on the Highway. Anything left they might be very conservative using and likely going to keep it for the capital's defense.

Those are just my own thoughts. Cheers!