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I've run Serpent's Skull all the way through, though I wound up having to cut huge chunks out of the last three books and do a lot of improvising. It took a year and a half, playing in five weekend-long sessions.

As others have already commented on, I probably should have figured out a way to combine Vaults of Madness with City of Seven Spears. Unfortunately, I ran the whole Book 3 adventure in one long weekend for my group and there was no way I could effectively do them both at once.

Which is leaving me basically needing to either rewrite a large portion of the adventure (which I'm doing) or figure out a way to skip most of the vaults and proceed almost straight into The Thousand Fangs Below (which I'm also doing).

I'm really frustrated by all the Tome of Horrors creatures in this Adventure Path. I'm not a fan of 3PP; if I wanted 3rd Party material, I'd buy 3rd party adventures, not Pathfinder APs.

Also, since I do all my prep in HeroLab, I'm stuck with a surprising number of monsters that I can't just import into the portfolios. It's nice that the stat block is right there in the book but that doesn't help me as a DM who relies on HeroLab.

This is a frustrating part of the AP all around.

Name: Farra Acuul
Race: Half-Elf
Classes/levels: Ranger 10
Adventure: City of Seven Spears
Location: Sozothala’s Fortress
Catalyst: Paralysis from the mummy's Despair Aura.

I've been looking hard for any maps of Savinth-Yhi that might be available and I haven't found any luck at all. I'd make one myself if I had any mapping skill with maptool at all. Sadly, I really kind of suck at that.

I've run the first book of the AP for two different groups. Both groups had a bard and they were both extremely handy to have. I know that seems a bit odd for a jungle-centric adventure but getting along with people is still pretty darned useful in this AP.

Has anyone made any maps of any of the city districts using Maptool or some other mapping program you'd be willing to share? I'm going to be running this in a couple of weeks using a projector for maps, and my maptool skills are sadly deficient. I'm just looking for tactical maps to run combat with.

I'm especially interested in the central district (governing, I think? I misremember) surrounded by all that water. I could see some great opportunities for combat around the crumbling bridges.

For that matter, if anyone has seen any good tactical maps of ziggurats around, that's be a big help too.

Thanks bunches.

Has anyone had time to create portfolios on Hero Lab for some of the beasts in this adventure? I'm especially looking for the Camulatz and the Vrykolakas. Just checking, since I do not have anywhere near the skills required to create these from scratch myself.

Thanks!

Name: Garrok
Race: Half-Orc
Classes/ Levels: Barbarian - 3
Location:

One of the things I've always meant to do is learn how to use one of the mapping programs (like MapTool) to make maps for my campaigns. Unfortunately, I've never actually managed to do that.

I'm planning to run all of RtR this weekend and a projector just became available for me to use. As a result I've been scrambling to edit maps from the PDF so that I could just project them rather than draw them up from scratch.

My question is, has anyone made any city/ harbor maps for play in Eleder or any other areas that we don't have maps provided for in the pdf that you'd be willing to share? Does anyone who use projectors for their maps have any recommendations or suggestions?

Thanks!

I'm frantically trying to prepare for GMing Racing to Ruin in one long marathon pathfinder weekend next week and have been using Hero Lab to prepare the encounters. Unfortunately, I'm not yet familiar with entering new content into the system. Has anyone created the various new beasts and/or NPCs for RtR yet? I tried contacting dwtempest but haven't heard back from him.

Thanks for any help anyone has to offer!

I've been a long time lurker and this particular conversation has inspired me to actually post.

I'm running Serpent's Skull for two groups and I'm playing in a third. In my experience on both sides of the table, I haven't found the NPCs necessary for survival at all. They're helpful and fun to have in the group but necessary? Not really.

Group A took them everywhere they went and still almost got completely wiped out by Mother Thrunefang. Group B by and large left them to keep up the camp and fought in the caverns without any of the NPCs and actually did better than Group A. The differences in the two combats were based on tactics, preparedness and degrees of caution.

As far as the diseases go, they can be annoying but they haven't nerfed any of the PCs into uselessness. I have to wonder if, in your case Petrus, a) your DM is being particularly ruthless with you, b) if your party just isn't taking advantages of the resources to decrease the possibility of disease, or c) if you've just been having outrageously rotten luck.

Finally with the traps: Group A had one PC get caught in the trap and was uninjured by the spikes. Group B had two PCs get caught in the traps, neither injured by the spikes. In Group C (where I'm a player) two PCs have gotten caught in the traps, and only one injured by the spikes (ironically, mine). Neither Group A or B has a rogue in the party.

The fight with Mother Thrunefang is definitely a tough one but it largely depends on whether or not the party is rested at the time they enter the underground caverns and how the party reacts to MT's tactics. Group B actually had a tougher time with the cannibals and Group A made the mistake of going down there right after the cannibal fight. Generally speaking the success or failure of a party depends on so many variables (including player skill) that there's just no one correct answer in regards to the difficulty level.