Cheliax's largest city, Westcrown, has fallen to the Glorious Reclamation, and the evil adventurers are sent to reclaim the metropolis in the name of House Thrune. Armed with the legendary weapon they created from a gold dragon's head, the nefarious characters confront the Glorious Reclamation's forces and break its siege of a nearby Hellknight citadel. Once the army is defeated, the villains enter Westcrown, where they must undermine the chivalrous knights' rule of the city. Finally, they face the founder and Lord Marshal of the Glorious Reclamation to end the rebellion and restore the Thrice-Damned House of Thrune's rule over the empire of Cheliax.
Was in this as a player, so can't comment on anything behind the screen.
This was certainly a High Level Game where you Fight Good Creatures. That's really the best that can be said for it.
Sure, there were some interesting setpieces and enemies. But, why is everything in the city possessed of an artificially high stat block? I could swallow it if it were specifically Glorious Reclamation folk who were sent here to hold an important city, but it's not. Every random dude here is coincidentally at the right level for a book 6... for some reason.
Others have said this but, holy heck where did you get all these paladins? It was a tad absurd even in Wrath, but isn't paladin supposed to be a somewhat unusual class which takes a remarkable level of personal dedication and really means something for the individual? They're a dime a dozen here, no big deal I guess.
Which brings me on to my next point. Paladins have some nice immunities, as we all know. Some would say they have some extremely strong immunities. I say let them have their fun... usually at least. But when nigh on the only enemy you're facing is paladins, these things become very apparent. Let's be honest, a huge pull for this AP was the chance to play evil characters with evil abilities, access to domains you wouldn't usually get, antipaladin stuff etc. And as we learned in our group, a LOT of evil class features involve fear, charm, and compulsion. Yes, they're nasty things to do, but this is an -evil- game. The presence of so many paladins is a huge middle finger to a lot of the tactics and class features which are going to be favored by evil characters. I'm not sure what the impetus was for this decision, apart from to make sure the PCs don't have too much fun being evil, and are subverted as much as possible.
It might be subjective to our group, but the final villain seemed to be completely out of nowhere, no fanfare, and no reputation build up at all prior to fighting her. Compare this to Hell's Rebels, it's extremely anticlimactic and underwhelming.
Adding my voice to those fed up with the evil iconics. I'm sorry but the art is some of the worst I've ever seen, and they're horribly made characters. A couple of them are interesting enough in terms of story, but I'd love to know what drugs the person is on who decided that a duergar paladin is a sensible choice.
Assault on Brienne's castle! And celestials killed!
I just finished reading this volume and found it to be very nice, possibly the best of the saga (maybe a close second after volume4).
The mass murdering at the begining of the book is simply glorious (pun intended) and the Korradath is a very funny and live dungeon, if a little too small ( i especially apreciated the fluidity of the encounters, well connected to previous player actions and Chorus).
The missions in the middle are also well varied and interesting. Including other elements of the campaign, such as the inferno gate is a marvelous idea as well. My favourite point of the adventure must be the final lines on the Big Bad Good Lady description..and the alternate ways of..dealing with her..reminded me a lot of the first Mass Effect game.
Continuing the campaing is also a very interesting article, especially for the high level stat block presented...very looking forward to any player foolish enough to face that. Also, what to do with a good artifact was a very nice read.
I loved the bestiary, filled with high level celestials, it felt very consistent with the needs of a high level evil campaign.
All in all i am very satisfied with this volume, the art, tough being somewhere a bit too dark (but that gives out a lot of atmosphere) looks very good, except for a certain high level cleric, way too plain for being such a high level cleric. If i must find a ngative element i must say that i'm quite surprised by the numbers of high level paladins present in the Glorious Reclamation army. Tough i understand that lower level enemies would have counted for nothing.
At this point, I'm figuring it went something like this:
"Hey man, I noticed in the warehouse we have like ten boxes of paladins, and they're still unloading more, what's up?"
"Dude, it's going to be radical. I ordered up like 500 identical paladins for the big battle at the end of Wrath of the Righteous! You can't have an epic battle without hundreds of identical paladins, pretty sure gygax said that."
"We cancelled that battle bro! Oh man, we're so fired when the Golem finds out!"
"What? No dude, hold on, I have an idea. We pitch an evil adventure path! Every encounter in the last two books can just be a s*+& load of paladins, problem solved!"
"Man, I don't know about you, but I don't know how to write an evil adventure path!"
"I got that covered too! We just make the party a bunch of government agents for the legitimate authority! They won't actually do much evil s#+~ at all, but they can still be hellknights or whatever."
So you set off the artifact bomb you spent a whole book building, only to find it's two or three delayed blast fireballs with a ridiculous summoning caveat that the game encourages you to let the party play as some ridiculous undead, which sort of defeats the purpose of role-playing? The head of an adult gold dragon, blood of a bunch of peasants, the desecration of a holy spring, and the destruction of an ancient monastery of evil for roughly as much power as the level 14 sorcerer's 6th level spell slots. Once the tiny warhead has been dropped, you sneak into the city, conduct some more silly rituals while fighting a whole bunch of paladins. Your old friends from Castle Dinyar are back: An endless fountain of paladins, minibosses that can be summoned by the final boss, and making knowledge checks to identify which devil is best at standing on a bridge. Okay, that last one is new, but it's absurd enough to fit it with the Scourge of the Godclaw, or even The Inferno Gate. You identify some other devils to delegate to, because there are no Chelaxian troops or Hellknights anywhere on the planet. Then you fight the biggest paladin of them all(or make a reasonable diplomacy check), and you're done!
This book answers one of the great mysteries of the adventure path. We finally discover why Iomedae left Heart's Edge behind when she ascended: It wasn't very good. This is a good book for mediocre artifacts. The quest to corrupt it is pretty extraordinary, if you choose to follow it, in that it's way harder than just leaving it with the court of Zon-Kuthon to torture evil s~$$ for a thousand years.
All of this is not to say this book is without redeeming value. There's a sequence I haven't mentioned with some awesome, thematic monsters in a sensical sequence, and the Solar form of the Angel Knight is going in my folder for all eternity as a 'Melee Solar.' The combat maps are pretty great, all the non-paladin fights are solid, and most of the art is awesome. While I would rather have had more evil s+~* to do, perhaps actually invading heaven with an Archon who was uncomfortable with the unlawful actions of the Glorious Reclamation and their indifference to the pain caused by their actions, perhaps destroying a major good city as vengeance for them taking Westcrown, the book works, and is far better than The Inferno Gate.
GOOD: Battle maps, stat blocks, Westcrown article and bestiary are solid.
BAD: Illustrations are too dark or crude, magic items/artifacts either op or just strange. The encounters are very much work for the DM, because of multiple spellcasters and/or spell-like abilities, missions feel like computergame quests. The BBE is boring and has no build-up.
UGLY: You NEED the NPC Codex to play this, as every 3rd fight has characters from it!The Iconic necromancer lvl 7 with AC 12 & 41 hp.
The "Evil AP" is a failure, mostly because of the boxed-in framework. "Way of the Wicked" shows how it's done the right way. Luckily this is the ONLY AP that failed.
Hope to play this AP as a player. But I am already sad: there are no chronicles for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play for this AP! Maybe it can still be sanctioned, despite being about evil villain protagonists? Some kind of Infamy\Disrepute mechanics?
