Chapter 6: "The Twice-Damned Prince"
by Brian Cortijo and James Jacobs
Their deception revealed and their plans waylaid, two deadly and Hell-touched siblings make a desperate final play for control of Westcrown. With the city in chaos and its leaders fled, few stand to defend the beleaguered people when the plots of fiends turn upon them. At the same time, the rulers of Cheliax launch their own ruthless plot to retake control. Can the PCs return order and shatter the Council of Thieves’ age-old stranglehold on Westcrown once and for all? Or will the former capital slide fully into the grip of a terrible new deviltry? It's up to the PCs to decide in the climax of the Council of Thieves Adventure Path!
This volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path completes the Council of Thieves Adventure Path, and includes:
“The Twice-Damned Prince,” a Pathfinder RPG adventure for 11th-level characters, by Brian Cortijo and James Jacobs
Catastrophic new rules for running a variety of calamities, from fires to floods,
by Darrin Drader
New revelations on Mammon, the avaricious archdevil of Erebus, by F. Wesley Schneider
Pathfinder Varian Jeggare and Radovan face down devilish plots and the laws of Cheliax itself in a gut-wrenching conclusion to the Pathfinder’s Journal, by Dave Gross
Five new monsters, by Adam Daigle, F. Wesley Schneider, and Neil Spicer
A Pathfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for characters of 11th to 13th level. The Council of Thieves Adventure Path is the first to take full advantage of the new Pathfinder Roleplaying Game rules, and works with both the Pathfinder RPG and the standard 3.5 fantasy RPG rules set.
Pathfinder Adventure Path is Paizo Publishing's monthly 96-page, perfect-bound, full-color softcover book printed on high-quality paper. It contains an in-depth Adventure Path scenario, stats for about a half-dozen new monsters, and several support articles meant to give Game Masters additional material to expand their campaign. Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes use the Open Game License and work with both the Pathfinder RPG and the standard 3.5 fantasy RPG rules set.
Council of Thieves finally becomes less linear. Players have a lot of choice regarding what to do in their climactic final battle. This feels a lot more like Book 1, which emphasized dungeon crawling less and set piece fights and encounters more. The GM has a series of NPCs and enemies for the players to interact with and can place those where they will. It's a fine way to handle a final set of encounters.
I think my issue is that it doesn't feel very climactic. Maybe the story in CoT just doesn't lend itself to a big, climactic struggle at the end. It's a low-key, and dare I say, low-stakes story compared to a lot of other APs. Some of the villains will feel like they come out of nowhere without a lot of work to foreshadow them that the AP doesn't provide. I don't know if the AP has given the players enough reason to care about the story that was happening with the ultimate AP villain. And the last boss themselves is a huge cake walk if the PCs make the right choices. It's very anticlimactic.
Honestly, Book 5 felt like a better "ending" for the AP in general. This was a persistent problem with Council of Thieves: major plot threads that were too disconnected, and with too little information provided to the players. Books can, and likely should, be done in a different order, which is not the sign of a strong plot.
Overall, the entire AP started strong, but the back half didn't move the plot along in a way that felt like a climax to a good adventure story.
This was a good finish, just not mind-blowing. The players get to run around the city and tie up all their loose-ends, and this freedom was refreshing after several books that were very dungeon-focused to the point of being too railroading. Still, there was nothing super memorable about the encounters, except the final showdown which was exciting and well done.
It felt like a bit of a grab-bag of disconnected challenges, some of which were interesting, but many of which were just fights with groups of monsters straight out of the Bestiary. Spice it up, and add appearances and encounters with any recurring villains or characters you've accumulated, and it will not feel like an unsatisfactory ending by any means.
Oh, and one other piece of advice for GMs running this: You may way to adjust the fame-point table at the end, because achieving a satisfying ending requires that the players have earned almost every single fame point available in the entire AP. My players were consistently thorough and successful and still barely avoided having a bad ending result.
Overall, worth doing. We had a good time finishing out the AP, despite some bumps along the way. It always feels like a journey to get through a campaign like this, and Council was no disappointment, though it definitely had some stretches that were much more fun than others.
This adventure had some definite strengths and weaknesses. One of its strong points was its non-linear flow: the GM is presented with a series of related events to run as he pleases and in no particular order. This allows for the adventure to develop in an organic manner, as opposed to forcing the PCs down a particular path. Also, the manner in which the party deals with these events usually has an impact later on, further adding to the realism. There are no dungeons per se in Twice-Damned Prince. This made me a bit leary at first, but the author pulls it off quite well.
Now for the bad. While all of the adventure's events are solid and well presented, few of them struck me as particularly interesting. With the exception of the two main antagonists and a tiefling monk, I found the NPCs bland and uninspiring. For example, many of the enemies in this adventure are, not surprisingly, rogues. Why, then, did the author decide to make the vampiric Thesing a rogue as well? Why not a bard or sorcerer? It would fit his character thematically, and make for a much more interesting fight than yet another backstabbing thief-type.
Another annoyance came in the form of the fame point system. Specifically, Twice-Damned Prince adds a new type of "points" called popularity points, which must be tracked separately from fame points despite being very similar to them. This seemed unneccesarily complicated.
The article on the archdevil Mammon was fantastic, easily as good as Sean K Reynold's best Deities of Golarion articles. You even get a ready-made 20th-level high priest of Mammon who would make an excellent villain should the GM wish to continue this campaign. The bestiary has some intriguing high CR entries, though like past CoT bestiaries, the illustrations are mediocre. The Catastrophe article presents a great set of rules for running disasters such as floods and fires.
All in all, Twice-Damned Prince is a solid adventure that falls a bit short in flavor and comes with some great supporting articles. I'd give it 3.5 stars if I were able.
Maybe it's feeling unappreciated since Crystal wrote a whole blog about Cosmo and Sarah Marie and didn't mention the hard work the server does behind the scenes.
Yup; similar to Pathfinder #28, which was pretty much an even split between me and Boomer, this one's a split as well. Although Brian wrote about 2/3 of the adventure while I did 1/3. (Although it's more or less impossible to tell now which 3rd is mine and which 2 3rds are Brian's, since I also developed the adventure.)
I'm having a major font problem with my PDF copy. My error message says that Acrobat (7, if it matters) "cannot extract the embedded font 'QXLDF+SteelMagnolias". And I think the whole adventure is in that font since all I get are a series of dots.
I'm having a major font problem with my PDF copy. My error message says that Acrobat (7, if it matters) "cannot extract the embedded font 'QXLDF+SteelMagnolias". And I think the whole adventure is in that font since all I get are a series of dots.
i'm confident that uninstalling and reinstalling Adobe Reader will fix that.
Nice! I was wondering if any of the powers I had designed for the Paizo Golem would ever get used for anything, or if they would just forever be lost in the blog archives. ;)
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Draznar wrote:
The pdf is out allegedly for subscribers? I don't seem to see it in "My Downloads", am I missing something?
The PDF is only out if it has shipped or in shipping to you, If your order is still pending you would not have the PDF yet.
You just have to wait. It can take as long as a week after the shipping begins to get everybody's copies out in the mail. One month you may be one of the first to have yours ship (as I was this month), others you may be among the very last (like I was last month).
The pdf is out allegedly for subscribers? I don't seem to see it in "My Downloads", am I missing something?
We grant access to the PDF's as soon as the individuals' package has been shipped from the warehouse. Looks like your order shipped out today and you should now have access.
When I look in my subscriptions it shows that issue #29 is the last one shipped, and that issue #31 will be the next one shipped, I checked to see and I can't find where #30 will be shipping to me at all. Is there something in this issue you guys don't want me to see? ;)
When I look in my subscriptions it shows that issue #29 is the last one shipped, and that issue #31 will be the next one shipped, I checked to see and I can't find where #30 will be shipping to me at all. Is there something in this issue you guys don't want me to see? ;)
When I look in my subscriptions it shows that issue #29 is the last one shipped, and that issue #31 will be the next one shipped, I checked to see and I can't find where #30 will be shipping to me at all. Is there something in this issue you guys don't want me to see? ;)
Sent you an email.
thanks,
sara marie
Thank you M'dear! I will take care of the payment today! :D
I have some questions about the Vouivre on page 88, but first let me say it's a great monster and I really like it.
Can her humanoid half wield weapons with her humanoid arms? I'm guessing yes, because I cannot think of no reason why she couldn't. If so, how does this change her full attack? Does she get two additional off-hand attacks with those weapons? Just the two weapon attacks, and a off-hand bite? It seems like it could be taken different ways.
Since the Vouivre technically has two heads, meaning two mouths, do we treat her like all other two-headed monsters with a breath weapon and let each mouth have a separate breath weapon and round count or does the dragon head alone have the breath weapon?
I really like this monster. I like how it doesn't feel like anything else, and I believe it could a be end of the campaign type boss with the addition of some class levels, and that is why these questions came to mind.
I think I saw it mentioned elsewhere, but if you copy/paste the statblock names in this issue they end up like this:
page 10 Cutpurse: C!"#!$%&
page 10 Council Captain: C*!+,(- C.#".(+
I just received an email telling me the PF30 PDF was updated to fix a problem with image extraction. I downloaded the One File Per Chapter PDF yet again and, alas, the maps are still sectioned. I'm using Adobe Acrobat 8, by the way.
I just received an email telling me the PF30 PDF was updated to fix a problem with image extraction. I downloaded the One File Per Chapter PDF yet again and, alas, the maps are still sectioned. I'm using Adobe Acrobat 8, by the way.
I just checked the map on page 12 of the main adventure, and extraction is working for me with Adobe Reader 8. Is it not working for you?
EDIT: I just personalized and downloaded the One File Per Chapter PDF again. Adobe Reader 8.1.2, Page 12. When I click on the map while the mouse is a cross, I get a square section of the map instead of the whole thing.
I don't know if it's just a problem on my machine.
EDIT: I just personalized and downloaded the One File Per Chapter PDF again. Adobe Reader 8.1.2, Page 12. When I click on the map while the mouse is a cross, I get a square section of the map instead of the whole thing.
I don't know if it's just a problem on my machine.