I also wonder what Radosek should do with two empty floors and resting PC's.
My group (with Rolf in place of Nadya now) went through the first two floors of the tower in our last session. They made so much noise and hubbub and drew so much attention to themselves (mostly by staring into the mirrors and making faces and taunting the unseen masters behind them) that they more or less kited every single guard to them. It turned into a massive brawl in the main chamber of the first floor, which they only just survived after three party members were knocked cold.
The same thing happened on the second floor - they caused such a commotion that there was no feasible way for me to NOT have the other hostiles (mobile hostiles, that is) hear what was going on and show up after a few rounds of combat. So they had another slugfest with the atomies, the spriggan, the Captain, and Mierul all at once. After surviving that (again, just barely and seemingly against the odds), the animated ice statues were a piece of cake.
Maybe Radosek just gives the lower floors up as a lost cause and hunkers down on the top floors? He could try his hand at a few mundane boobytraps to slow down the intruders. Radosek's hope would be that if he can hold out up there long enough, relief will arrive in the form of the returning patrols/more fey creatures who can reclaim the first floor and trap the PC's between levels.
The odds are pretty durn high that the encounter with the Pale Tower guards is going to result in combat instead of diplomacy. Just have the screaming townies run towards those guards accosting Nadya and blabber about what they just saw. The guards leave Nadya alone (since they think they've got their quarry cornered at the scene of a crime) and charge off to the inn and then you have your fight there (with all of them at once, not the two separate guard encounters). Might be a slightly tougher fight, but if she's considered part of the group at this point, Nadya could follow and get in a good sneak attack or two from behind while the guards engage your party.
My party hasn't TPK'd, but Nadya is dead. Pretty early on too. Through a series of complicated and unfortunate events, the creeptastic innkeeper and his cheating wife ended up killing her with a crossbow bolt to the back of the head while the party battled the Pale Tower guards and their sergeant.
So I'm kind of stuck on what to do here. No one in the party is a native to this land, so a native guide as a DM-NPC will be pretty helpful throughout the rest of books 1 and 2. I've considered two options:
1.) Statting up Rolf (the village priest) and using him as the party's guide to the area/source of local and regional information. But I have a hard time justifying why he would just up and leave his parish. (Unless I had the Red Rider send him a Geas type vision through a dream or something.)
2.) Bring Ringerr in much earlier. I'd need a reason for him to travel to the village though. Maybe something to do with the Heralds? I dunno. I like the idea of Ringerr coming in because I could still keep the aforementioned encounter with the lost kid in the next book. (Since he'd obviously have impetus to rescue/keep safe his great nephews now that their mother is gone.)
An aside: looking only at your avatar and your gushing over chapter 5 in the final paragraph of your post, I felt sure you were Brandon Hodge. I was only disabused of this notion when the time came to edit the quote tags. Funny, huh?
Lol. Should I pick a different avatar?
Anyway - you've got some good nuggets there and it's at least given me some things to mull over. I will concede that it would be less homework on my part to retool what's already here than repurposing another adventure entirely. The connection with the Winter Collector on Triaxus continually slips my mind, but that might be in part because it's not mentioned as prominently (at least not in this part of the AP) as I think it probably should be.
the idea of the winter portals is they are appearing first where it isnt winter already such as taldor or even andoran or katapesh. Besides its the BABA YAGA adventure path NOT the Irissen adventure path. I rather like the frozen stars and the whole ap in general.
I completely understand that this is Baba Yaga's AP, but I see next to nothing about Baba Yaga in this part of the adventure as written. Some may have complained about Maiden, Mother, Crone, but at least it's a dungeon built by Baba Yaga - it's populated with denizens who know her (or know of her), and there's a potential to pick up just a few little nuggets of lore about her and the things she's done.
In Frozen Stars? None of that. Somebody said 'War hydras with a siege tower!' in defense of this, and I think that's what rubs me the wrong way about this adventure. Beneath all the shiny gee-whiz trappings, it's just a planet Baba Yaga happened to visit before her son invited her to Earth. Beside the first part of the adventure where the players are trying to learn the new configuration of the hut (the only part I'd like to keep from this adventure), I don't see a whole lot that ties this world into Baba Yaga, her backstory, etc, etc.
If it's just going to be a long fetch quest, I might as well set it somewhere else on the PC's home world - somewhere they're more likely to care about and potentially visit again. (I can't be alone in thinking that more than a few player groups will have pure apathy for a war taking place on an alien world they've never heard of before and will likely never go back to see again.) Besides, I have a feeling depositing the players on an alien world in part 4 takes away from some of the wow factor in dropping them in the middle of Russia at the start of part 5.
I have to say I'm not very impressed with this one and I'm seriously considering dropping it in favor of something that will be more palatable to my GMing tastes and the style of my group. While the setting information presented on the Triaxans is interesting and all, I find the actual adventure aspect somewhat lacking and it feels like even more of a tangential side-step than the previous adventure.
If I swapped a different scenario in here it seems like all I would really need is another adventure of suitable levels and the keys to Earth as a reward at the end of said adventure. Am I missing anything?
Awesome. I've already planned on Rohkar being the hook that gets the PCs together in the first place: a crime boss hires the PCs to take out Rohkar because he's been causing causing the boss all kinds of trouble AND he stole the love interest of the boss away with a more lucrative pay day (that would be Ten-Penny Tacey). And this is all before they discover Rohkar has kidnapped Lady Argentea. I want the PCs to be sick of hearing this guy's name before they even meet him.
But adding your idea into the mix makes it even better, especially if he takes out an NPC who was part of the team. It gives the PCs extra incentive to chase after the Hut instead of falling back on the Geas effect all the time. "We'd better keep up or that jerk Rohkar is going to beat us to it."
I wonder if Rohkar could stow away inside the Hut when the party eventually claims it and starts travelling worlds?
..which makes me wonder: Will we still like the scenario without being hung up on game mechanics? Does the game system matter?
jh
I know this post is from months ago, but I felt compelled to say that I ran this AP (and a few other Pathfinder adventures) using AD&D 2nd edition and everything was fine overall. Not to undermine the Pathfinder rule system and the legion of fans who dig it, but the material in Paizo's modules are (on the whole) so good you could run them with practically any fantasy RPG rule system you wanted. You can still take the plots, the characters, the maps, etc from the AP books and easily substitute appropriate monsters and magic items from your ruleset of choice - and presto - you have a great campaign to run for your players using your preferred RPG system.
So... I have a player who is guilty of looking up some spoilers from this particular adventure. Yeah, I know. That's not cool at all. But before anyone jumps up and tells me I need to kick this person out of my group, I've already had a heart to heart with the player about gaming etiquette and I'm confident it won't happen again. (And if it does, then the person definitely won't be invited back).
Thankfully the player didn't divluge anything to the other players in our group, or else I might be tempted to scrub the whole thing. As it stands, we're about to enter our fourth session of HoH, and everyone is really enjoying themselves, so I'm not about to cancel everything on account of one naughty player. What I'd like to do is make some changes to the plot, the encounters, etc -- so that one player's foreknowledge won't tempt them to metagame.
I have a few thoughts in mind.
:
Changing the Piper's minions to something other than stirges. The party hasn't encountered any stirges yet, and they've only dug up research on the Mosswater Maurader and Father Charlatan thus far. I'm just having trouble thinking of something else that could do his dirty work. Giant vampire bats?
And this...
:
One of the council members is in on the sinister goings-on.
I've thought about one of the councilmen being aware of what the WW were doing. It seems like quite a stretch to assume the cult were performing this massive ritual down at the prison without a routine passing patrol of the sheriff and/or his deputees noticing something amiss. What if one of the councilmen was 'on the payroll' of the Way (so to speak), and looked the other way while they extracted the warden's spirit. This councilman was probably a rival to the Professor, and it was he/she who convinced the insular townsfolk to be wary of the Professor, probably spreading rumors of him being a 'demonologist' themselves. The council member also directed the sheriff's attention elsewhere during the WW's ritual.
This would give the PC's a non-supernatural enemy outside of the dungeon setting, although they would have to gather substantial evidence to prove the councilman's guilt or face the possibility of being turfed out of town by an angry mob.
And this is the big one...
:
I'm seriously considering changing the main villain of the piece from TSM to... Vesorianna. Just reading the backstory to HoH, I really got the sense that the warden's wife caused much more harm than good when she showed up at the prison, and I don't think the guards were wrong to toss her in a room after she became hysterical and started causing problems (the elevator). But what if the afterlife has twisted her into a cruel spirit? Maybe she's already 'consumed' the spirit of TSM and is using his MO to lure the PC's to the prison? With the warden's spirit now gone, perhaps the only thing preventing Vesorianna's spirit from complete dominance over the area are the remaining four prisoners, which she will dupe the PC's into vanquishing before turning on them.
Alternatively, I've thought about Vesorianna being evil in her mortal life. It seems a tad disingenious to paint the warden and his guards in a heroic light when they routinely dragged prisoners off to a torture chamber for giggles. So what if all of the dark goings-on at the prison were the influence of the warden's sinister, domineering wife? What if she ran the torture chamber for her own twisted pleasure? What if she was the one who introduced the concept of branding the prisoners to her husband and his guards? In this version of the story, TSM becomes more benevolent in his afterlife - perhaps coming to terms with all of the terrible crimes he commited and simply reverting back to the spirit of Hean Feramin. Of course, that doesn't stop Vesorianna from playing the damsel in distress and attempting to get the PC's to vanquish TSM's spirit. It's up to Feramin to convince them otherwise. (And it's a toss-up whether or not my party would still want to destroy his spirit anyway for the crimes he commited in his mortal life).
Does anyone have any other suggestions? Or resources/links they can direct me to? (Besides this forum, which has already been a tremendous help). Thanks.
