We began back in June or July and finished last weekend, though our weekends all became complicated and it took us I think 2 months just to get the last 2 gaming sessions done.
We had 4 players and I DM'd. The players were:
LG Human (Keleshite) Cleric of Sarenrae
CG Human (Varisian) Fighter
NG Half-Elf Ranger/Rogue
LN Elf Wizard (Evoker)
It was our first game with Pathfinder rules. I updated the adventure before each book. We started off with just the core rule book and added the APG after it came out.
In general the party (with 3 of the 4 players being very smart, strategic, long time D&D players) didn't have too many problems, Pathfinder characters being noticeably stronger than 3.5 characters. But with the small group I didn't want to make it a difficult campaign and basically ran the campaign as is (small tweaks here and there--besides updating of course)
Overall we all had a great time.
Comments on:
Book 1
First scene of play, the party is convinced that Dashki is a red herring and doesn't pay any attention to his mention of pugwampis. Instead they are suspicious of Father Zastoran who I played as being quite sexist (and 3 of the characters were female). Immediately I had to do some DM'ing as the group decided not to go looking for the lost goat and instead head for the monastery the next day. I really didn't want them to go there without having the the foreshadowing of fighting pugwampis and so I had another goat taken the next night which got things back on track.
The party is scouting out the monastery from the outside, are convinced that the statues in one small room are gargoyles but discover stirges instead. The Ranger gets a stirge in the neck and almost bleeds out, which was apparently foreshadowing the fairly regular occurring feature of that character almost dieing.
For multiple reasons I knew that Tempest would be most useful to the Fighter in the group. However, our fighter specialized in the bladed scarf which I just could not bring myself to claim was also used by one of the templars of the 5 winds, hahaha. So, instead of finding Tempest, I had the lingering power from the Moldspeaker (which happened to the fighter without me even having to cheat) infuse her current bladed scarf with the power of Tempest. Worked out very well.
The Moldspeaker idea was very neat and the player did a great job of roleplaying it, at first worrying the rest of the group with symptoms of a split personality. The player even took 1 level of Sorcerer to reflect this more and took Enlarge Person as one of the spells since Jann have that.
Very funny moment when after realizing that Dashki was missing, the group goes looking for him, following the trail which vanishes in the middle of a sandy area. The cleric quickly believes that Dashki buried something there and tried to erase the markings and so starts digging in the sand, literally digging towards the mouth of the dust digger which promptly swallows him whole! The rest of the party killed it and he managed to just barely get out alive. He was quite paranoid for a while after that.
Epic fight at the Battle Market and we were all sure that the fighter was going to die since she got separated in the fight, she ended up on the second floor while the rest of the party was still on the first with Khardswann in between.
Book 2
This adventure went pretty fast and straight forward. The group partnered with the trogs to get to the Carrion King. The Carrion King was a glass cannon. The worst thing that happened was that I had him use that disfiguring attack first on the fighter (the character was a belly dancer using a bladed scarf and who's second highest stat was in charisma), I hit and did 7 Cha damage, thinking it didn't really matter except that I forgot that character had a level of Sorcerer now and so couldn't use those spells until that damage was healed.
Other than that, the scariest fight for the PCs was outside against two of the gnoll guards riding on the dire hyenas. The PCs ignored the mounts at first and paid for it with continual trip attacks. After that, those hyenadons were always the first things killed! ha
Zayafid, who party quickly despised, escaped.
Book 3
Zayafid quickly returns leading the attack in the desert while the PCs travel to Katapesh. The cleric really didn't like that this guy had escaped and had prepared every day since Zayafid fled both Invisibility Purge and Dimensional Anchor. haha He didn't get away again.
Dinner party scene as is felt forced, but as I had the NPCs keep approaching the PCs, the PCs wanted to know how the NPCs had found out they had the scroll, and so Rayhan suggested the dinner and that worked out well.
We had a little bit of trouble, when the PCs (led by the cleric) decided that the bad guys must need Rayhan alive to open the scroll (you know what they say about assuming) and so replied to the kidnap letter with a taunt...which killed Rayhan and displeased Sarenrae greatly.
No other problems in the adventure, they got Rayhans body and raised him (I stressed that he was old and wouldn't normally have wanted to come back but he was too eager to try to open the scroll not to), he eventually opens the scroll and I decided that the energy from the broken scroll shatters and destroyed Rayhan, the group felt pretty bad about that.
Oh, one issue with the AP which I had known going in. By book 3 there were some hints that the scroll contained Jhavul. In a normal campaign, the players would not have opened the scroll at all. But, they knew it was a key part of the AP and so they played along and let their character curiosity take them into it. Which of course they see Jhavul leave and just shook their heads.
Book 4
This seemed to go pretty quick and straight forward again. The party meets the Proteans, realizes they are creatures of Chaos and probably shouldn't be completely trusted. Eventually partner with Dilix.
I changed the background a lot in this adventure. The author, Jason Nelson, was nice enough to email people copies of his uncut original draft which was significantly different in parts than the published version. I went with a sort of in between version, having the earth genies brought in to stabilize the plane and not part of Jhavul's army.
Our Ranger (who is played by a young man without much D&D experience) seemed to almost die a lot in this book. Generally in the same manner. Win initiative, charge bad guy, hit once, then get pummeled by full attack of monster. Rinse, repeat. The worst though was against the Golden Ram. The ram kept escaping them, so the Ranger comes up with a plan to sneak up on it and throw a tanglefoot bag. Good idea. So, they spot the ram again, he sneaks up on it, and then...proceeds to NOT follow his own plan and instead try to grapple it. Not even close, full round attacks then a trample later, only Breath of life saved him. The funniest thing about it was that there was a pattern of everyone coming up with a plan, and then the ranger would win initiative and not follow the plan, making everyone groan as they watched the fight become much harder...but this was his plan and he still didn't follow it! Well, I thought it was funny at least.
Book 5
This was really the worst part of the AP. The book itself wasn't bad but NO ONE enjoyed being trapped on another plane after having immediately been trapped on another plane. Then throw in on how HUGE the place was and that it was essentially a dungeon crawl, it really messed with the pacing of the game and the party was VERY glad when this one was over.
The group did some scouting, ended up in the Flickering Candle section and cleared that section out. They were making plans on how to attack the Fire Giants by the Bull pyramid when it dawned on them that there were a pile of Fire Giant heads in the Salamander room. So, they went back and brought with them the head of the Salamander and made peace with the fire giants. That saved A LOT of time! The giants escorted them right to the black jinni Imam Shabendeh and from there they went right up to the top of the citadel. They avoided lots of nasty fights because of that too, like the Div who I thought might TPK them with his rain of debris!
The elf genie killer assassin guy attacked the cleric, I think, who rolled the DC exactly to avoid the death attack.
Book 6
The party cleaned up the town very quickly and with no real problems. By chance, the cleric (who had become an expert summoner) summoned up 5 Bralani to help out in the Brazen Tower and the Clockwork General fell very very quickly because of that.
Davashuum got close to taking out the fighter (who was the moldspeaker) but the Bralani had finished off most of the flesh golems before the pcs even got there and so D fell after 2 rounds I think.
The fight with the return of the Carrion King was fun but the room was really too small for the morgh's to really take advantage of the trap which heals them. The Carrion King only got one lick off on the cleric who had already cast Freedom of Movement so it did nothing.
The cleric then cast wind walk and with the use of a handful of augury spells learned the fasted way to Jhavul and just whisked their way to him. I had the nightmares spot them and they managed to breath smoke on the wizard but she made the save and the party just kept flying past. Next the advanced efreeti hit a couple of them with rays of flame but they still sailed past and got to Jhavul. They used the wind walk to get to the other side of the lake before dismissing it and the battle was on.
The Efreeti and fire giants came in chasing after the party but the Moldspeaker with an awakened Tempest set up a tornado (with the party and Jhavul in an eye) to keep everyone else out. The cleric and the wizard then made their rolls against Jhavul and his hit points disappeared quickly. But not before the Ranger charged him and let Jhavul hit him with a series of full attacks haha. Only some temporary hits points, stone skin (from the ram's horn) and the cleric's rebuke death kept him above 0 hps! But Jhavul only got one more good hit off before he was gone. I had decided (since we knew this was the last day of the campaign) that I was not going to have him flee, but I think he took enough damage from a maximized Dragon's breath spell that it wouldn't have mattered!
And that was the end of the campaign. The end fight felt a bit anti-climatic but it was only because they had prepared well for the fight. The wind walk and ignoring eveyrone else made a huge difference.
I've had to take a break from gaming for now, but this summer I'll be DMing Serpent's Skull for this same group, can't wait!
Thanks go to Paizo for their work and for the great support by both Paizo, authors, and fellow gamers on these boards.
