Wraithcannon's page

Lots of Information, but lots of information I already had from the AP articles.

Biggest disappointment was ignoring the input given on the materials when they were originally presented.

Spells like "Rovagug's Fury" sound good until you realize that you use the spell casters CMB instead of replacing it with the {CL = BAB and Spellcasting stat replaces Str} formula that almost all other CMB related spells use THAT MAKE THEM WORTH CASTING.

The problem is that this issue was pointed out in feedback on the forums and apparently was ignored, so the spell remains useless. That's just one example.

Another problem is the lack of the custom summons. If the APs articles are removed from the additional resources for PFS play I will be very disappointed.

I can only reinforce what some of the other reviewers have said. The books opens with a chase scene that takes up the first 100 pages of the book, it gets old quick, and doesn't get any better.

The heroes find themselves increasingly, improbably, flushed out of every single hidey hole they find, either well thought out or not, to continue the chase past the point of exhaustion. If I were one of the players in this adventure, I would have either told the DM, "OK I give up, you catch me, because it's obvious I'm not supposed to get away no matter what." or just thrown my character sheet at him in disgust and walked away.

The second part I have a problem with is that once the heroes decide to go on their little trip, they have almost none of the regular gear and adventurer would need to go dungeon delving or traveling cross country, no money, not even magical healing, which they have to find later. Even when they do find it, it's like a glut was put there by the author once he realized that his characters were about to die, they have so much they can't even carry it all.

I don't know what it is about Ed and giving his hero's weapons, but he just doesn't, and they eventually wind up rolling around on the ground with their enemies, trying to kill each other with rocks, after losing or breaking every weapon that they have. It gets old man, give the hero a magic sword and let him use it! Quit having them scrabble around trying to beat each other to death with broken crossbows. It's boring.

The dungeon scenes were fun, although it would have been cooler to see them get caught in a trap and think their way out instead of bypassing them all ahead of time. All in all I liked that.

But the maiming, why? What was the point of that? I know that sort of stuff happens in real life, but if it doesn't add anything to the character, or make a development later more interesting, then why do it? If they kept the magical gauntlet to replace what was lost, that may have actually been a cool idea. But a clockwork hand? Where are the Pathfinder rules for those BTW?

I have read every single Pathfinder tales novel, and this one fits solidly at the bottom of that list.

This scenario was hell, literally.

The skill challenges were fairly stiff, and didn't make much sense considering the evidence we had in hand. We did some roleplaying but thankfully had the skill set to make all the talking a formality.

The map was gargantuan, our GM had it printed out on a poster sized map and the scale was still too small to use as a combat board. I'm sitting there looking at it thinking "when the crap hits the fan and we have to fight our way through a fortess full of Hellknights, this is either going to be awesome, or suck the most suck that anything has ever sucked. Then there was no giant fight with the Hellknights. As Harry Potter would say, "Letdownius Majorus".

Now to my real beef with this session, whomever thought the dimensional anchor effect in the second fight was a good idea needs to really consider what that means.

Sure we found some potions, but as the DM pointed out, they only have a 40% chance of working each. One party member was still cursed and my mount (as a cavalier) was cursed after we had downed them all. What now?

What now means that 2 of the 5 party members are not heading through the portal, it would have been suicide for my gnome cavalier if he was mountless and had gone in, and your armored jello dog that was designed by an angry 12 year old is going to slaughter those 3 other PCs without breaking a sweat. At this point the adventure was over, sorry Zartra, poor dice rolls mean you rot in hell.

Luckily for us, we players came up with the idea that the Hellknights must have a chapel and some clerics who could possibly remove the curse. The GM used a handwave to say that we slipped over there unoticed and that they were prepared to remove our curses at standard spellcasting costs and chances of success. It still took almost a 1000 gold between the 2 characters to get the curses removed. So yeah, thanks a ton for that.

I want to point that out again, if the GM hadn't handwaved a way for us to get uncursed, 3 players would have stepped through the portal and 3 players would have died a certain death. Was that the goal behind the design of that mechanic? If so, good job.

You shouldn't paint characters into a corner that keeps them from continuing the mission, plan on giving them a way around whatever happens, or else that's just poor game design. If you only mean for the curse to prevent people from using dimensional travel during the prison fight, have the potions they find have a hightened caster level for auto success, or better yet, don't force them to rely on dimensional travel to complete the mission!!!!!

One last thing, her "boon" at the end of the scenario is utter garbage. The only thing you've done is split my level appropriate reward down into two chunks, one of which I have no use for. At this level I already have all my magic items of 3000 gp or less, my handy haversack, my +1 armor and weapons, and the other cheap wonderous items I had slated for purchase. If you had written it as a one time 10% discount on one item up to the value of the GP received for this scenario, I think that would have been a nicer idea. Instead I'm forced to buy something for 3000 gp I don't need and sell it for half price, effectively cutting my reward down even further after having to pay extra to get my mount uncursed.

Boo.

The story is thin but I've seen worse, the investigations are boring, the opening fight isn't even worthy of half the party, and the end fight is way OP for the pregens unless you have forehand knowledge and select the correct upgrades.

Aside from all of that, the reason any serious PFS players should avoid playing this is because if you fail to kill the BBG, she just flits away and then comes back to haunt you for the rest of your career by potentially messing with your boons. There is no sure way to avoid it either, if the dice are unlucky for your party, you've got a succubus breathing down your neck for the rest of your characters life.

Pass