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Dervish PRC from Complete Warrior built with Scout levels from CA and Swashbuckler levels from CW ---
Not necesarily broken in terms of power level (though a bit on the high end), but just created the slowest player turns ever. Dozens of tumbling rolls to avoid AoOs during the dervish dance special ability, tons of number crunching and reconfiguring damage rolls based on whether target could be critically hit... the rest of the players would literally leave the room (for the bathroom, a smoke, a cross-town food run) when this PCs turn came up. The player actually made things worse by just absolutely having to find out (the hard way) whether every single foe had the combat reflexes feat, then getting a weapon with the thundering ability... yeesh.
... and the worst part about it is the character was MY idea, thrown out in the open on an off-night one-shot game, and the adapted for a one-and-a-half year-long campaign.

I'd like to second this opinion, having played a wizard (diviner) in the Shackled City AP. Having now perused that a bit after the TPK, I agree that some of these adventures are not making substantial room for wizards and their spellbooks. It's all well and good to assay free-time in the Free City or what-not, but for the faster moving party there's very little to salvage from defeated spellcasters in the way of arcane power. Now, with 3e's allowances for sorcerers/warlocks/what-have-yous the idea of spellbooks laying around is less imporatant than in previous editions, but with the wizard (or even wu jen or archivist's) reliance on spell formulae laying around, it seems that there should be a bit more "written in" for wizards to salvage. If a wizard (or other "prepared" spellcaster) is limited to just what is found in 3e adventure/modules, half (if not more) of the "bonus" versatility of the class if lost. To summarize, in the SC AP, my wizard was basically just down to the 2 spells learned at level-up (post-"Flood Season") which made him even less effective than the sorcerer who at leat eventually learned 2 spells at each level. Just something the superb staff at Dungeon should keep in mind for we few "old-schoolers" who like the idea of our characters lugging around reams and tons of spell paraphernalia.

Can anyone fill me in quickly on issue #133's idea of Wind Duke/Vaati blood for the PCs? Mine has not arrived (may not for a few weeks) and I've already been kicking around the idea with one of my PCs.

Briefly - as part of some "campaign options" I allowed the players to randomly draw, the half-elf sorcerer has a modified fiendish familiar graft; in this case, a small hairless face protruding from his throat, which babbles quietly (and incomprehensibly) in Vaati. It has also supplied the sorcerous knowledge of the Mage Hand and (now) Levitate spells to the PC. I based this on the fiendish familiar graft from RTtToEE/Fiend Folio. As yet, there have been no ego problems (I figured this one would be strongly lawful as opposed to the standard "evil" configuration). The freakishness of this "growth" also set up a position at the Emporium for campaign start-up.
I came up with this idea when starting this campaign. Had only seen as far as "Blackwall Keep" at that point (campaign now on to 3FoE - we move slooooooow). Was actually happy to see less references to the Wind Dukes later on. Any advice on how the developments in #133 might affect all this? (I only ask now since we're finally playing again in 2 days and I'd like to start incorporating this PC's graft a bit more)

He never truly gained access to the tomb until he was dead and now all of a sudden the PC's have Wind Duke blood?

Crap. Wind Duke blood? I already set this up for a character in my campaign. Can anyone fill in some details about this event real quick, as I have to run a game in 2 days and haven't seen 133 yet?

Currently standing at:
Hans, NG half-elf Sor4 (with elemenatal graft familiar)
Ember Draco, N human (Suel) Bard 3 (one 'ghost' level in dragon bloodline from UA)
Kaman Nasht Thah, LN tiefling Mnk2/Rog1
Hilter Zane, LN human (Baklunish) Clr3 of Xan Yae
Gaschtoff, LG human (mixed Oeridian) Ftr3
and
Bloodmoon, N half-giant psychic warrior 3 (may currently be dead...)

and the truly dead:
Strodes Muret, NG aasmiar Clr1 (rotting at the bottom of Diamond Lake; don't refuse to heal the party...)
Skrymir Gallahee, CG azurin Pal2 (variant); returned for burial in Greyhawk at temple of Trithereon
Frey, CN shadowswyft Rog1, body under observation at Twilight Monastery

... I may have created a monster with the "campaign options" I randomly handed (hence non-standard abilities above). They're reasonably well-balanced with flaws, but are making this a somewhat freakish party.

Seattle huh? Bummer, could probably find you people if you were in Texas... try looking up the guys from Bloodhag. I'm sure they might have some ideas, and your Dungeon association would probably impress them.

30
First really got started at about 10 in Australia, where I had to virtually go through frat hazing just to get into the game (AD&D already at that time) and had to constantly improvise about how "American D&D doesn't work that way." Family then took me to France, where the local D&D game was the only real thing tying the few English-speaking kids (from Britain, Singapore and United Arab Emirates) together. Been on it ever since...

(I'd like to point out that I think a certain gamer I know might be able to blow this age thing out of the water, given that we were playing with his two YOUNGEST kids, who were in their mid-'20s... you out there Jim?)

BA, Linguistics, UT Austin

work as a bartender... couldn't tell you why (might have something to do with the alcohol)

Maybe Erik Mona can answer this... do you know why the links to Living Greyhawk Journal info have been disabled from the WOTC site? Is this info meant only for RPGA members, or is there another online source?

Ugghh... here they come.

Jax Daily, halflinf rogue
Nee'Chee, elven priest of dead god (Nietsche? get it?)
Finnegan, captain of the ship 'Wake' (yup, 'Finegan's Wake')
Ozweepay, dwarf (slipped right past me at the time as I hadn't seen the SNL skit with Nicolas Cage)
...Of course, some of these pale in comparison to some of my own attempts to come up with good, "well-thought-out" names. My last PC was a dwarven spellcaster named Yurian. According to the dwarven language write-up in Races of Stone, it meant 'strong in magic' or some-such, but of course 'Yurian' quickly became 'Urine,' which I ended up having to answer to as that's how the rest of the party referred to him.
Prior to that, I was playing an oriental-ish priest. Wanting to model him on Tibetan Bhuddist monks, I actually used what was a real, historically valid and proud name from the people I had taught in Nepal at one time - Sirham Rai. I was quite proud of this, until everyone at the table started referring to him as "Sir Ham-On-Rye."

Wow. Just, 'wow.'

Sadly, I felt like I knew the characters... notice how the fat player guy's name isn't in the credits? Hmmmmm.....

How about posting them here for the meantimes?

Yeah, in 3rd edition I would have to say that the one single class a party cannot do without would be the cleric. There are multiple ways to cover the main combat duties, and roguish trap/lock problems can often be overcome through brute force or a variety of magics. Social interactions depend on the campaign, and mostly, even with rules/numbers behind, the players themselves. But not having the cleric's singular usefulness a a source of healing can be crippling. Sure, now divine souls, spirit shamans and healers (from Miniatures Handbook, ugh) can approach that ability, but druids (and paladins, rangers and bards) are so far behind that curve... The 3E attempt to make older editions' clerics less of a "band-aid dispenser" with spontaneous casting is good, but has still not eliminated the problem.
I actually don't see it as a "problem," should the trad D&D tropes be accepted (all healing comes fromthe divine etc.) but man, without one in the party, the game becomes much harder to run. I've had 2 full campaigns come to messy TPK conclusions (after years each) which could fairly directly be related to a lack of a cleric PC at the critical junctures (the NPC cohort in the 2nd one happened to be off plane-hopping... long story). Now my AoW campaign is struggling with the same, after a 1st-level "accident" with the initial cleric. Though the bard naturally learned CLW as soon as possible, and the paladin did what he could (even the psychic warrior made sure he was self-sufficient), the party just accumulated too much damage. Being good role-players, they don't want to pull any "We camp right now. Who can make a heal check for tomorrow? I made one for tonight." And they got beaten down, some past -10 HP. And now they will have a cleric again.

Also, going back to another post on this subject (and with Eric's advice there) the metal could well be kheferu (from Sandstorm), which is a red ore that can be forged into weapons capable of overcoming the damage reduction of creatures with the earth subtype, regardless of said DR's derivation. This would certainly explain it's use as a resting place for a quiescent earth elemental (as a note, in my campaign the party has forfeited their "rights" to the WC in favor of the Free City Adventurers, and to rub some salt into that wound, Auric will soon be swaggering around town with a shiny new red warsword...)

Name: Frey (shadowswyft rogue 1) and Skrymir (azurin paladin 2)
Location: Chamber of Sighs
Adventure: Whispering Cairn
Catalyst: Wind Warriors cutting party in half

Really, not much of an interesting story to this one (given the other deaths at Wind Warrior blades) ... warriors floated up as scripted and began wailing on party. Shadowswyft rogue immediately hurt badly, and he runs toward the center of the platform. I posit an upward column of air immediately lifting him up and out of danger (he's at 1 hp). Party does poorly (even with sorcerer's immediate use of Wand of Shatter), and wounded members begin to make a scramble for the central platform, hoping to be lifted to safety. This allows wind warriors to continue cutting them down (I did mention multiple times that the warriors were FLYING), but poor tactic continues. Only the monk eventually reaches the central platform and levitates up as well, only to be cut down by pursuing wind warrior, who then guts the shadowswyft as well. It then pursues the sorcerer, who manages to do one more in with wand in running retreat back to "safety" below the blue lamp. Sorcerer almost has remaining warrior down and shattered when he gets cut down... vaguely sees my deus ex machina as Auric smashes into Wind Warrior before he stabilizes and passes out. The rest of the party (of six!) slowly bleeds as Auric, Khellek and Tirra interrogate sorcerer. They eventually find three more party members around central platform in Chamber of Sighs; but paladin and rogue have expired (long agonizing sessions of everyone in the party rolling to stabilize). Do keep in mind that 2 party members are well above the central chamber, and are not found.
...there were some very poor tactical decisions made by the party, but this mostly came down to bad luck. No one could seem to roll above a 10 to save their life (literally). Not wanting to punish them for merely rolling badly, I allowed the rescue by Khellek and Co. (they had been suspicious about the party lately after all). I also allowed another "plus": the monk of the Twilight Monastery had indeed been reporting his doings to his brethern at the monastery, and even told them the location of the cairn before this very trip. Before he would have died (7 agonizing hours and 7 failed stabilization checks later) one of the priests of the monastery found him in the hidden tomb, and together they gained Zosiel's artifacts. This is now irking Khellek and Co. to no end, as they ransomed back the other 4 party members to Allustan for rights to the "find" at the cairn, which has now essentially been looted. I'll have them lose interest long before the "Return to..." adventure, getting all that back on track.

The suggestions above are all spot-on in my own attempt to "psi-up" the AOW. My group is about to begin the 3FoE portion, they will be running into a group of tiefling psychic warriors, and the Faceless One will definitely be a psion (in this case, a mind-seeded "clone" of what could be a recurring villain if my party thinks him memorable enough, which might also explain his facelessness; a flaw in the mind-seeding process).
That seems like a good plenty for that module, but future plans include phrenic "pets" of the lizardmen near Blackwall Keep, the aforementioned mind flayer (who will keep his sorcerer levels but use the psionic illithid method for the XPH as well)... and that's about as far as I've gotten. At my group's role-playing-heavy snail's pace, I'll have plenty of time for more customization.
I would suggest that if one does this, that they keep in mind the replacement of magic with psionic equivalents (especially if there are psion/wilders about). Remember that dorjes = wands, power-stones = scrolls etc. etc. This adventure path certainly will presume the average character wealth rules (based on future lethality) and spell/power storing items are presumed to be useful, not sitting around awaiting sale because there is no druid/wizard/what-have-you in the party.

PC Name: Strodes Muret, Aasimar Clr1
Adventure: Whispering Cairn
Location of Death: Lair of the architect
Catalyst: moldy fun and really poor spot checks

Event: so the party had missed the hiding lurking strangler, and had noticed the brown mold covering the passageway to the "workshop." They hole up in Nadroc's bedchamber (having much fun with the floating air cushion bed), and the lurking strangler, who's been hiding unnoticed behind one of the Wind Duke statues, decides to make his appearance. The monk on watch doesn't see him floating in (a 1 or 2 for a Spot check) but makes his save vs. the sleep ray (a 19 or 20). Though tipped off that something's going on, he does nothing, and eventually the lurking strangler floats back in unnoticed (another 1 or 2 or maybe a 3 for the Spot check) and once again the monk fights off the lassitude of the eye ray (another 19 or 20 for a save)... it goes on like this for a total of four passes, until the monk finally wakes the party. They all manage to not spot the strangler, who flies away in disgust at his inability to do anything to the party (and because the DM was getting bored with that)...
Then the fun starts. The party is a bit more healed up and ready to tackle the brown mold. They know it's cold. The players know what this is. Some of them even remember what to do. Their PCs do not, and they play it out beautifully (role-playing XP bonuses all around). A number of torches sail into the mold, which doubles in size and knocks the monk unconcious with the subdual damage. The cleric scoops up the monk, and everyone begins beating a hasty retreat out of the mold... the rest of the party breaks right towards Nadroc's bedchamber, but the cleric hauls the monk left to the hall of statuary. The strangler bursts out of hiding, the cleric (with his much vaunted aasimar senses and high wisdom) rolls a 2 for his spot check followed by a 3 for his will save and then he's choaking for air. By the time the rest of the party role-plays out figuring out how to kill the intervening brown mold, they make it over to the cleric just in time to see him choke his last [then a psychically-powered Large greatsword does for the lurking strangler].
... again, I have to give my group credit for role-playing new characters well. They knew for damn sure that was brown mold (having fallen prey to it in the last campaign), and yet they took their lumps. The cleric dying was just bad luck... which could not possibly have had anything at all whatsoever to do with the fact that I know that that player will always choose to go left, no matter what (heh).

]If you're inclined to nerf item creation feats like this, you should really inform your players up front about it so they will know not to bother choosing those feats for their characters. You should also allow wizards to swap out their free Scribe Scroll feat for something that will actually be useful, such as a metamagic feat, Spell Focus, or the like.

I gotta agree with this. I'm all for controlling magic items and such, but let your players know that's the case. Also, though it's less "realistic" (good I love using that term as it applies to fantasy role-playing), you should probably discuss with the players whether or not they'll have time to craft items. AoW seems to allow more down-time (thus far) than the Shackled City AP, which after 2 adventures had the party running pell-mell after their mysterious foes with barely the time to scribe a single scroll.

ahh... sweet Sunn0)))... that's good stuff too (hell, they wear druid's robes on stage!). And yes, there is a band called Mind Flayer... it's some of the guys from Lightning Bolt. Never quite figured out that Lightning Bolt was a D&D name until they started Mind Flayer; then everyting started coming together. Hyper-spastic prog-noise... real cool stuff. Not quite as impressive as Lightning Bolt, but still real cool. BTW, do yourself a favor and see Lightning Bolt if they roll through your town; the two Brians in the band put on one of the best shows I've ever seen.
(on an even more tangential aside, the guy [Pete] who released the Mind Flayer record on Bulb Records used to play D&D back in Hattisburg, Miss. with one of the guys in my campaign. It's weird how these things link up sometimes...)

As an aside (at least from the palindrome discussion), I wanted to note that bringing in anything related to "Kyuss" is going to have my group rolling on the floor laughing, as we started this campaign while working together at a rock club where we would see the members of the rock band Kyuss in all their current projects (Queens of the Stone Age, Mondo Generator, Fu Manchu) on a regular basis. Now, naturally, those guys did get the name Kyuss from D&D (I asked), which helps with our current game of "outing" rock stars who play D&D. The list is quite lengthy, and could make for a good Dragon article or something I suppose... at any rate, metal is saturated with fantasy/D&D references... try High on Fire if you're looking for some good battle music with completely over-the-top Lovecraft/Howard/Gygax references (not as obvious as the bands Lightning Bolt, Mind Flayer and Black Wizard, but close).

Ya know, I noticed this problem with the last Adventure Path as well. Very, very little gear was appropriately sized for the halfling cutthroat, and as I was playing at the time, I could only beg the (new, first-timer) DM into allowing us to special-order small-sized weapons from the smithy in Cauldron. Having now perused the whole Shackled City adenture hardcover, it seems that old Jax would have never gotten a single good magic item in the campaign (had we lived long enough). Having now taken over the reigns again after my DM hiatus for the AoW, it's telling that the same group of players now includes not a single small-sized character.

Is the player's character an incarnum class?
Ukos

No, the player has a variant paladin (CG Avenger) of Trithereon. Naturally, I tried to suggest that soulborn might be the way to go, but he understandably didn't want to jump into a core class with which he was completely unfamiliar. After briefly explaining what an azurin was during character creation, I suggested Cobalt Power (he was already planning on the Power Attack tree). With the Power Attack pre-req, that meant just one potential use for his 2 points of essentia (one wasted 'till 6th level or the acquisition of another feat or so).

Has anyone else noticed a lack of interest in essentia acquisition due to the level-based caps on investment? One could of course, plan for the future, but that rarely seems to happen with "dead" (unusable) feats. Perhaps comparable to a sorcerer taking Maximize spell at 1st level (technically possible) even though it couldn't be used until... what, 8th level? This seems to apply to a lot of the casual (non-meldshaping) uses of essentia, especially at under 6th level.

Gricks have never impressed me either (though the minis are cool and disturbingly numerous in my group's shared collection).
It's going to be a grell in my game. Going to have lightning-lance scorch marks all over the chamber (frightening duels with Alastor over time; the ghost is scared of possesing it... he's just a kid after all). A flying creature with a good chance of paralyzing foes (and then automatically winning bull rush attempts against them to send them into the iron spheres) who can then strafe grounded opponents on iron balls (lightning oughta conduct a bit on ferrous metals, no?). Should be much fun... if my PCs ever figure out how get to this chamber (not looking very bloody likely).

...and that someone is a prophetic mind-reading genius. Thicker Than Water fits like a glove with a character background I've been having trouble rectifying (a fiendish/elemental graft related to Auran creatures). Monte Cook, once again, has some sort of crystal ball focused on my living room 3 years in the future.

Well, there's been a slight upset in clever plan to play-test incarnum rules... after reviewing the book, the player of the azurin opted to not take the Cobalt Power feat, feeling that the added essentia point from the feat was wasted. Not wanting him to feel slighted in his choice of character (which was from a randomly-drawn "campaign option" card he received), I suggested the Shape Soulmeld feat to get his character something more substantial to use (I don't generally allow takebacks on feats, but our first two sessions have involved no combat, so I decided it could happen). So he has an incarnum-shaped magical battleaxe that returns to his hand (Incarnum Weapon) and now he's the center of attention. We'll see if the other players can control their dismay/greed and undertand that "the rules are balanced, man." We shall see.

For anyone who has an interest in injecting Magic of Incarnum into the AoW, let's discuss how to do it.
(As an aside, I'm not a power-gamer, nor do I think the MoI rules are "sweet" for making cartoon superheros. I am, however, a sucker for new rules systems, and picked up MoI out of passing interest. I always think my campaigns could stand to benefit from new/old/"lost" magics, and want to see how it could be done.)

- I'm leaning towards a light touch with incarnum, and want to tweak a few things here and there to add meldshaping foes and elements (I'm also tweaking things at about the same rate for psionics). The grimlock cleric in 3FoE will be a totemist (his penchant for beast trophies seems to beg it) and I'm thinking about making a few random grimlocks Lost as well. More will come as I review the adventure path further (and get my MoI book back from the player of the azurin in the party).

Naturally, the psychic ills of an imrisoned demi-god and the poison of his followers could certainly taint the soul-energy of a campaign. I've had no concrete ideas beyond a general sense of wrongness with soul energy in certain locations in the the campaign (the Dark Cathedral etc.) Any ideas?

I think I created a monster with a definitive write-up of allowed races (LA-0 or +1), but this is what I got going during the character creation session for a Greyhawk AoW campaign:

Skrymir Gallahee, CG azurin (Suel) avenger* of Trithereon
Strodus Muret, NG Aasimar cleric of Pelor
(going for Radiant Servant of Pelor)
Kaman-Nasht-Thah, LN tiefling monk of the Twilight Monastery
(planning on going rogue/shadowdancer)
"Ember" CN Suel bard (major red dragon bloodline)
Bloodmoon, N half-giant psychic warrior
and
unnamed-as-yet half-elf sorcerer w/fiendish familiar graft

Don't think everyone's aware of the LA lag, but they'll learn. Had them do a quick meet-and-greet at Lazare's house (with an interruption by Khellek) and they're now following the muddied bard after he was thrown out in the square for arguing with Lazare.

* the avenger is a variant paladin from Dragon 310. We'll see how the incarnum factor works out