The heroes arrive in Minkai only to discover an empire on its knees. The
Jade Regent has twisted the ruling government to cater to his despotic
whims, and throughout the realm the people suffer. Before the PCs
can attempt to stand against the tyrant and liberate Minkai, they must
first earn the trust of its people and recruit aid from across the beleaguered
empire—all the while dodging murderous oni and deadly ninjas controlled
by the Five Storms. Defeating bandits who ride forth from a hidden fortress,
rescuing a famous geisha from a deadly island prison, and standing tall
before a corrupt daimyo’s army of samurai are all in a day’s work for the
hopeful liberators of the empire.
This volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path includes:
“Tide of Honor,” a Pathfinder RPG adventure for 12th-level characters,
by Tito Leati.
An overview of the mysterious nation of Minkai, a mystical jewel of
the Dragon Empires, by Tito Leati.
Revelations on the ways of Irori, god of history, knowledge, and selfperfection,
by Sean K Reynolds.
Revelations and severed limbs in the Pathfinder’s Journal,
by Dave Gross.
Five new monsters by Tito Leati, Sean K Reynolds, and Mike Welham.
Each monthly full-color softcover Pathfinder Adventure Path volume contains an in-depth adventure scenario, stats for several new monsters, and 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 world’s oldest fantasy RPG.
ISBN–13: 978-1-60125-385-9
Tide of Honor is sanctioned for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure Path and Chronicle sheet are available as a free download (532 KB zip/PDF).
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
Just finished running recently great sandbox adventure with a wide mix of rp puzzles combat and establishing the land of Minkai be sure to read the empty throne before running this as the fm should introduce info in this adventure so it doesn't come out of left field. Lastly Tito needs to write more adventures!
Going into Jade Regent, I was looking forward to this book the most. Finally arriving in Minkai with your goal close in hand, yet still far off and with plenty to do was exciting. After reading through it though, I found this volume lacking.
First of all, I don't think I can talk about this volume without mentioning the next installment as well. In The Empty Throne there are two characters introduced that play a significant part in the final battle. These characters are not mentioned at ALL in this book. What's more, is that the next book goes into details about how players can learn about these characters from NPC's in Tide of Honor. This is a glaring disappointment, and this should have been written into the book instead of a sentence or two mentioned in the final book.
Aside from that, I also found an issue with the "down time" between sections of the book. PC's are spending hours and even days traveling from one place to another, and the only thing you are given to help with the grind is a large random encounter chart in the back. This is a country that is suppose to be in turmoil. The people are being oppressed and need the PC's and their allies to save them; but all we get is a single sentence saying the people are being oppressed. This is a huge disappointment in my eyes. It really forces the GM to come up with all of this information and planning, even though a lot of it should be in the book already.
This volume does have it's strong points. The dungeons and encounters are all well thought out, and thematic. The characters you interact with are strong, believable characters. But the time between those character interactions and dungeons are what hold this volume back. If you are a GM and are thinking about running this volume, be prepared to do a lot more work than normal to make this into an enjoyable experience for your players.
In Tide of Honor by Tito Leati, the fifth instalment of the Jade Regent Adventure Path, the PCs finally arrive in Minkai, the country of their destination. There they need to begin gathering allies to help them overthrow the Jade Regent and place the rightful heir, Ameiko, on the Jade Throne. Tide of Honor is something of a change in style for the adventure path. What has been primarily a journey from one point to another now starts to set up a home base. Instead of fighting clearly defined enemies blocking their way, the PCs must now engage in a significant amount of diplomacy to win the trust and assistance of people who might be willing to help them, or might not. There are still obvious enemies to fight, but there are also a number of people who could go either way or just remain neutral. There’s a great deal of roleplaying potential in the adventure, more so than any of the previous instalments (with the possible exception of Night of Frozen Shadows), and for groups who prefer that sort of thing, I think this adventure has the potential to be one of the most enjoyable and memorable of the entire adventure path. However, for groups who prefer a more combat-oriented approach, there’s still lots to keep them happy, and GMs can easily gloss over the diplomacy stuff in such cases.
The number one thing to say about Tide of Honor is that it is one of the best classic modules that Paizo has done in a long time, dressed up and made as Japanese as possible. Does it cover new ground? Not at all. Is it fun to read, well-written and engaging? Absolutely.
My definition of a classic module includes puzzles, riddles, fighting evil sorcerers, dungeon crawling, fighting bandits, and saving princesses. This book has all of that.
One of the only Paizo books to have a riddle, a 3-D item puzzle AND an honest to God maze that works even if you play Pathfinder 100% on-the-grid, Tide of Honor has a lot of good non-combat content for the downtrodden roleplay-lovers who spent the majority of Hungry Storm rolling up random encounter after random encounter. There's diplomacy, investigation, and "scenario dungeons"-- a phrase I'll use here to describe a collection of encounters your middle-high level PCs can hit any way they like, instead of the more formulaic dungeons where the PCs are expected to go through room A1 to get to A2, and A3 to get to A4. Oh, and there are formulaic dungeons too. Something for everyone (except for people who hate table-top games).
Encounter variation is extremely good. The module runs the gamut from martial to mystical encounters and even includes a puzzle encounter, something I thought was interesting. I especially enjoyed one encounter which the DM can employ against the PCs any way he would like, and the advice presented in executing this encounter stashed away in the Appendix.
The art in the book is very well done. No pieces seem lackluster, and all of them pop and depict their subjects very well. I am slowly falling in love with whomever does the pastel artwork for Paizo-- not in love enough to look up their name right now, but, seriously, they're amazing.
As far as what to look for, if your PCs enjoyed A History of Ashes, Tide of Honor has similar subject material-- Do all of these things so that you can gain enough pull to begin doing this thing, and also you are in a completely new culture that is foreign to you. If you're looking for a completely classic adventure module, Tide of Honor is the closest you're getting until Shattered Star.
Chan Chan. CR 1/2 or 3 for a swarm. It's a flying head with bat wings for ears. It spits acid and mutter to himself disrupting spellcasting. Very strange.
Kijimuna. CR 2. Tian Xia goblin essentially. Has a cool ability to steal fire using the fire as dancing lights spell or for an attack. It also prevents the item that had it's fire stolen (torch for example) from being lit for 24 hours.
The Old Man. CR 15. A herald of Irori, god of knowledge and martial arts. This guy is pretty powerful, he's a souped up monk. SR 26, not bad, but has 30 resistance to Acid, Electricity, Cold, Fire and Sonic! Regeneration 15 (Chaotic), and Heal as a spell-like ability 3/day just to name a few. Tough nut to crack.
Oni, Earth Yai. CR 13. An Earth Oni essentially. Can shoot a dense rock spike from its third eye as a swift action 200ft away. Deals 3d6 plus Awesome Blow effect.
Raiju. CR 5. Native to the Plane of Air, this fox-like animal is electricity given a mundane form. He has various electricity abilities and the classic Call Lightning spell 3/day. In dire need, a Raiju can assume the form of living electricity.
NOTICE: Due to inclement weather in the Seattle region, our warehouse is closed this week. Orders will be delayed, however we are making every effort possible to mitigate these delays and get back on our regular schedule as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
I hereby dub Tide of Honor as "The AP That God Didn't Want to Come Out."
Look forward to Monday morning when two of every animal stampede through the streets of Seattle, followed by Thursday afternoon when fire rains from the sky.
I guess I'm one of the lucky few whose subscription was shipped Wednesday - staring on the "pending" status every hour made me again bite my fingernails. I immediately downloaded it yesterday morning and have read it 2 times by now.
Gotta say it's the best book from this AP so far and Mr. Spicer really needs to put his shoulder to the wheel if he wants to be able to hold a candle to Tito :-). Awesome roleplay situations, great characters and locations and good fights. This is the kind of material I'd love to see more of.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
So, what happens if my shipment hasn't gone out by Wednesday? Will I, as a suscriber, actually receive my PDF later than people who simply buy it on Wednesday? :-/
So, what happens if my shipment hasn't gone out by Wednesday? Will I, as a suscriber, actually receive my PDF later than people who simply buy it on Wednesday? :-/
Yep! It's happened to me due to a snafu.
But the PDF'll still be worth every penny you paid for it :)
A lot of orders haven't shipped; the Paizo warehouse has been closed to weather for about half the week.
I'm sure Paizo is no happier about this than we are :)
Trust me, none of us are happy about the weather delays (read about the fun here). A lot of people came in over the weekend to get stuff done, and I know the warehouse is working hard to get everybody's orders out. I'm pretty sure I saw Lisa head down there, as well as Jeff Alvarez.
We're doing our best to recover from the Snowsplosion and make sure everybody gets their gaming goodies!
We're doing our best to recover from the Snowsplosion and make sure everybody gets their gaming goodies!
Oh, you have 100% of my sympathy, believe me. We have not forgotten the 2011 Halloween Storm out here on the East Coast, which we recall with a mixture of disbelief, shock, and awe.
Note that the picture of Granby, CT on that Wikipedia page is about 15 minutes from where I live :)
As the product description says, this volume has an article about the god Irori, as well as an extended gazetteer of Minkai, but the adventure itself has the PCs gathering allies to fight against the Jade Regent.
I like the monsters, magic items, some nice info on Minkai, and "The Oldman" is definetly cool. Not as many monsters in the AP as I would have liked, well at least the non-humaniod catergory anyway.
Anyone else having trouble / delays with their shipment? I just checked my tracking # and it's scheduled to arrive on FEB 06, and it supposedly shipped on JAN 18. I live in northern california, so not sure why UPS hates me so.
I do have my download PDF copy (yay subscription!). I absolutely love the magic tea set wondrous item. I love that it is a Diplomacy Check (though Perform might be more fun) to activate. And my wife is playing a Maesto Sorceror as a Geisha, so it works perfectly.
Anyone else having trouble / delays with their shipment? I just checked my tracking # and it's scheduled to arrive on FEB 06, and it supposedly shipped on JAN 18. I live in northern california, so not sure why UPS hates me so.
I do have my download PDF copy (yay subscription!). I absolutely love the magic tea set wondrous item. I love that it is a Diplomacy Check (though Perform might be more fun) to activate. And my wife is playing a Maesto Sorceror as a Geisha, so it works perfectly.
Maybe due to bad weather? I dunno, i just got mine yesterday, and it looked like it had been a few places and the main label was blank though there was a smaller label on the top corner.
Anyone else having trouble / delays with their shipment? I just checked my tracking # and it's scheduled to arrive on FEB 06, and it supposedly shipped on JAN 18. I live in northern california, so not sure why UPS hates me so.
Mine hasn't shipped yet. I haven't even got the PDF in my downloads yet.
Well, it doesn't exactly make me feel better. I don't think it has anything to do with living in central ohio, but I've come to expect that my packages (Once shipped) always take an extra week or two to reach my door than it would for anyone else. So I'm used to waiting, and therefor can easily bare with Paizo when they get hit by snowmagedden or whatever else the elements can throw at them.
But the fact that I got #52 before you is... unsettling. Hope it comes eventually, Jam.
I'm in LOVE!!! With the new monster that gave birth to Pikachu and Raichu!!
The Raiju is amazing, cool and I adore its artwork! Hope to see it in the Bestiary 4 where it belongs!
The rest of the monsters are not my type but Raiju makes up for that all! The adventure itself is awesome to read through! Can't wait for the last part!
I'll love the adventure, but I'm especially looking forward to the long-withheld information on Irori and the Minkai gazetteer. And of course, the monsters.