This might depend on what sort of players you have. If they are completionists, they might enjoy the if you fleshed out this whole epitome of sandbox. But mind, it has taken very long for my completionist players to get through the city, because when I started rewriting this module, there was not any real red thread between conquering your first district and finding Juliver. So I introduced smaller plots for every district to connect places and people better, not really adding numerically more things. Maybe 'round here is where it went a little awry: I might have made everything feel too important and now they want to finish everything in case they would skip something important...
And now that we are in their fourth vault, there are still a few plots they haven't finished and it feels a bit shame to have made those plots to have them not resolved, but Juliver is pushing the party to hurry up to find Eando, because what else she would do? If I hadn't weaved those smaller plots in, there wouldn't now be this conflict between finishing those plots and moving on with the main plot.
Spoiler:
Though I'm too getting damn tired of this city and been totally pushing players to move it via Juliver. I want to get to play with the Gorilla King and then crawl into Darklands... Especially because after seeing Derhii Scouts two lvls ago a player rolled knowledge and I mentioned the monkey city Usaro, and he said afterwards OoC how he had previously read about Mwangi area in general and that there was mention of some sort of Monkey Satan living there, and claimed therefore they are never ever going to go to Usaro. I've been waiting to be able to bring this unexpected party right to their doorstep!
About having less content: My party hasn't really been at all in vegepygmy or troglodyte districts, or done a single actual encounter there, and we are soon hitting lvl 11 (medium xp) and finished with the Vaults. So, feel free to take something major off or let the players skip things. I doubt they have the energy to go through everything before it starts to feel boring or aimless. You could have one or two abandoned or haunted districts with next to none combat encounters, and play things so that one of the competing factions never arrived into Saventh-Yhi. Pathfinders or Captains would make nice allies, and Mantis is an easily manageable invisible group for the DM to have in his pockets in case you want to throw a wrench into some player plan, and Aspis or Sargava can be the antagonists for you and your allies when Dargan Etters arrives. Don't get rid of too many of the interactable tribes or factions, party would miss them in the end of the campaign.
Other way to speed things up would be skipping the roleplaying about managing your own faction and campsite, but those NPC allies are the main friendlies they really have the chance to befriend and interact with. Maybe just focus the story around some made-up quests gotten from their own faction and keep other elements simple. Let them wander freely in one district to dive them the feeling of freedom? And don't implent very serious and potentially long subplots so the story won't lag or derail when you want it to move forward.
Race: Human
Classes/Levels: Paladin 9
Adventure: City of Seven Spears
Location: Sozothala's Fortress, which also served as The First Vault. I used Vault's map and locations, but its monsters were swopped to undeads that Sozothala would have had in his Fortress.
Catalyst: Sozothala. Player didn't pay attention to his negative levels and when he finally did, he thought he wasn't in danger of getting any more.
The Gory Details:
Spoiler:
The party had fun picking apart the undead minion army assaulting the Artisan District without suffering anything major. The paladin got a few energy drains from wights, so he had 3 negative levels. Maybe his holiness didn't feel the undead being a threat for his holy might.
So they charged into Sozothala's undead Fortress. They encountered some undeads and as Paladin did the major tanking he got 3 more negative levels from minions before well pre-buffed Sozothala engaged and started raining AoE spells. Fight was not going well for party, until the fatigued paladin finishes the minions, casts for the first time a spell to get a halo and wings made of light. Now he can find his way through the darkness to Sozothala to corner him and planning to Smite Evil him all the way to and past the afterlife come next turn - Everyone knows this is going to be the end of the enemy, as this character has been built to crit often and hard, and paladins do love evil and undeads.
But behold, DM sees a Wand of Enervation listed in Sozothala's Combat Gear. As it is known, paladin's touch AC is balls, and he gets hit without problems. 3 negative levels is suffered and the epic holy light surrounding him is tragically extinguished as he falls down with the honours of being the campaign's 1st dead PC.
The players thought that was the worst, but DM was not done, and next round Sozothala awoke him as a undead to attack the party. Emotions were high when they had to put the Paladin down themselves after Sozothala was murdered. Now undead paladin left the world again by faceful of positive energy spells, and wasn't that poetic.
(I accidentally cheated, because I didn't read the casting time for the rise spell, which was 1 min. I asked the player afterwards if he was cool, as party had no real access to 7th lvl Resurrection, which was lowest lvl spell you need to bring an undead back. He was fine with the Paladins semiepic ending, so I had no need to backtrack that undead effect to something like an animation of a corpse.)
Race: Halfling
Classes/Levels: Monk 10
Adventure: Vaults of Madness
Location: Isle of Shadows
Catalyst: Greater Shadow, and DM rolling dmg like the devil. Player didn't get scared after losing 11 strenght after two taken hits, runs head first into monster with 8 str left and gets OHKO'd.
The Gory Details:
Spoiler:
Two players were swimming in the treasure vault when the shadows attacked (3 shadows and 1 greater shadow). Monk was hit once for 5 str dmg (1d6) before they both got out of water. Shadows followed them up to upper floors and attacked the 4-man party + Juliver. Then on the next round the monk was hit again once for 6 str dmg (1d6). Then the greater shadow made his appearance and while the party was taking the smallers down nicely. Monk did not switch away from the front even when he and Juliver were the only ones that were hit by drain, just downed a potion of lesser restoration and ran to the greater shadow to pummel it down. Greater shadow had ~6 hp left when its turn came again and was able to touch the monk, rolls max str dmg with 1d8 and that's exactly what the monk had left.
The goriest detail might be that if they had remembered to add all their bonuses to att & dmg, death would have been easily avoided. They noticed this afterwards, and boy if in the future they still don't remember to add the bonuses their bard supplies them with.
In the situation they used hero points to stop the monk rising as a shadow spawn, so he didn't turn into undead and thus was easier to resurrect (thay had this undead resurrection problem before with their dead paladin). I nudged them to ask Osond for help as he had mentioned having done something like that once for his tribe before. Monk got reincarnated as a dwarf, and wasn't it weird to roleplay how he suddenly has this deep connection with rock and basically has an ability to smell the traps in the Vaults...
As a GM I would advice you to ask from your own GM:
a) If there could be any organizational tie-ins in your background.
b) If he could recommend any gods to follow.
c) If it would make sense if you knew someone in your party or a person friendly to your party.
The adventure path lets GM to alter it quite a lot and bring different things into spotlight, especially in module 3, so what would be a good tie-in in another campaign might not work in yours. I would recommend incorporating some known organization you GM might suggest, and letting the GM make some magic with the rest of your story.
I introduced the statues for my players at Government district. Or one of them... I got only so far as describing bronze-and-ruby Aveshai and them confirming the greatsword of light was not hurting them, and that the 15ft tall statue was a cyclop and not a titan, and did not seem radiate other magic except the sword... Two of the players continued to other rooms, but two other players stayed - and started to pry rubies free. They would have stopped after a few minutes, if they would have not appraised the golf ball sized ruby the statue had embedded in the iris.
So FYI, 2-2,5k gp ruby is indeed enough motivation to mutilate a 10000-year-old memorial's face with two axes and a knife.
Thoughts on making Issilar's ouster in Saventh-Yhi a degenerate serpentfolk who was awakened by Ydersius' thrashings and became a priest of the Headless King? Seems like it would make a little more sense than the degenerates bowing down to a non-telepathic being, plus makes one of the main bosses of Saventh-Yhi a serpentfolk to keep that important Snake Theme going. (Sometimes I wonder if the adventure writers intentionally avoided putting a lot of serpentfolk into the earlier segments because they figured it would be laying it on too thick.)
Or would it be better to have the new serpentfolk leader be someone who crawled up through the Vaults? Perhaps following an early Juliver, who's now under the tenuous protection of the Radiant Muse?
I have Issilar alive as well, and I don't rightly know the best place to throw him back in. Was thinking him coming back with te Gorilla King, or maybe Vyr'Azul's agents find and recruit him after Juliver happens.
I found it hard to make the Serpentfolk district interesting. Party would not find them diplomatic allies and it would be a boring slaughterfest after the blood spilled in Military District. And they would not buy a serpentfolk (rakshasa) leader either - horay for paladin's evil radar. So I killed everything myself and made these changes:
- Ugimmo was having trouble studying the district with all the serpentfolk around. Serpentfolk had pretty good resistance against mind control of Yog'oltha. So Yog'oltha came in personally (disguised as a halfling for PC reasons) and used illusions to clear the area. Terrified serpentfolk hid in the Vault found in the district, got infected with the spores, became mad, and killed each others. This happened maybe a week ago.
- I moved Vault of Silence there. It was creepy and undead-themed enough for this use. I added few extra spore rooms in the front for the serpentfolk to die in. I may change the main spore room for something else. Room E5 has some faulty magical runes drawn in there, as the guy in the coffin tried to rise as a lich (and failed), and the faulty arcane aura causes dead within 100ft to rise as a ghost a few days later.
- Vault will get a slight nerf, I'm not going to kill everyone with too high-lvl CR encounters, but I wanna leave it scary for the players.
- So now the whole district is instead filled with already dead non-aggressive serpentfolk ghosts wandering around and performing daily duties as they did in life. The rakshasa is also a ghost, but has some mental faculties remaining, so he can be spoken with. He is essentially a quest giver now. Ugimmo can control ghosts as well as zombies to help him to research. Some other species' ghosts also wander around.
- If the party destroys the faulty runes in the Vault, the ghosts regain some of their will and sense. They will become barely neutral towards party, and can be allied with if they avenge their death by killing Yog'oltha.
- Giant Mwangi Bat resides in the Ziggurat, if the party is not wary enough of the ghost hordes. It's passive enough that it could have lived there in symbiosis with serpentfolk. Chimeras live in the previous Ziggurat of the Bat.
With this plan I also get to introduce Vaults of Madness and ease the future transition between modules. :)
I like the idea of incorporating the generals more strongly in the city's lore.
I was thinking of making general Jikushtna a father of a PC as a personal quest. She would be his ultimate heir from the time before he met Savith. She'll have a noticeable resemblance with his statue, and it should give some push for the party to discover more of the history of the city. I might change his statue's text "His heart is remembered", if I'm going to paint him as a sort of saint of both Savith and Azlanti.
I don't know yet where that plot hook will lead to, maybe a relic or an artifact. Or a way to drop clues how to get into Savith's crypt and acquire an epic sword which Jikushtna left there. It should tho be a blunt weapon/bow/shield instead so you can't imagine cutting Ydersius' head off with it and thus you won't make finding Aveshai/Eroeme in later chapters unnecessary...
Savith's Crypt would have been nice post-Ydersius place to use to destroy the God for good, but no sense holding a good location back.
Radiant Muse being a reincarnated general is also a nice touch. Maybe she lead building of the city as Ommarra.
We finished Tazion a good month ago and I've been prepping for the next module. It would have been useful if I had planted one or two personal story plothooks during the travel. The sandbox we call Saventh-Yhi is full of opportunities (and in serious need for you to plant any relevant plotlines), but if you can manage to drop in maybe few quests which require to reach Saventh-Yhi to perform, it'd not feel like at this point players just reached the greatest quest-hub of all Mwangi. Seriously, drop in personal plot hooks; put in scholars asking questions about the gods lost in Earthfall; give the quests Shiv Survivors have before the intensive travelling starts (found in module 3 by searching surviover's name); leave a faction or two alone so you can bring in suprises with them later on; give some personality for your faction leader, he'll need it; read a bit about how to large the faction could be by Tacticslion http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l1he&page=3?The-City-of-Seven-Spears.
I had fun with Tazion. For the starters, players skipped 50% of the encounters of the town and went straight to the Ziggurat. Then they broke in quietly, killed mithril cobras only (and skipped every damn poisonous thing meant to weaken them) and surprised Issilar pants down. He escaped afterwards with aid of webs and ran to Elephant Temple to Raogru and his cohorts. Issilar did get Dominate Person cast successfully, party figured it out and retreated to forests. Then they decided to wait 3 days to let their faction to catch up, so they could get domination dispelled by Jask. The clock was ticking, but they wanted to play safe... So I decided not to listen the AP say to let the party explore Tazion without other factions interfering:
The party was timewise neck to neck with Aspis Consortium, but they slowed them down by accident. They sent false information of their route to the Red Mantis after the Mantis's hired local assassins failed in Kalabuto. The fake route they described was accidentally the route Consortium was having, so the caravan was slowed down by an exploding bridge. Their trailblazers would have gotten over by fly spell and continued ahead while the others fixed crossing. Their scouts found Tazion a day after party had retreated temporarily, and so they stumbled in the trap Issilar & Raogru had prepared in the Elephant Temple FOR the party. When party was assaulting the Temple, mind-controlled Ishirou tried shoving payers into tar pit, Ishirou's buddy was being sacrificed in fire room and the second buddy was trying to tackle Ishirou after saving from the mind control. Charau-kas assaulted with throwing weapons and Raogru with spells as players were (for some reason) afraid to cross the tar pit bridges, and Issilar was disguised as charau-ka. In the end, Issilar escaped again by setting the tar pit on fire. Later that day party tracked Issilar down and drove him up a tree. One parlaying and information&material exchange later he was granted his life.
Stories are nice, but this had at least some purpose. Ishirou is friend of the party, but he and his surviving pals will have some rough time as the prisoners of Sargavans and General Havelar. This also grants lots of possible ways to interact with the Aspis Consortium (assassins to silence Ishirou, hostage exchange, trouble with party's own faction leader, meeting Etters himself before he gets nasty ending in book 4). Then, I too had the ziggurat, which was still only very briefly explored, and party needed only the memories to complete the quest. It encouraged the players to check every room when the memories also gave them insights how the whole place was before Earthfall (lore ftw). Also, they walked in every poisonous thing that place had and in the end two almost died in the yellow mold - the bard was ready to give his dying speech after three failed saves and 8 dmg to CON.
