The heroes finally have the tools they need to stop the Whispering Tyrant, but the lich-king has not been idle. Why has he devoted so much attention to an isolated border fortress, right when divinity seems to be within his grasp? A quest to discover the tyrant's secrets plunges the heroes into a deadly race through a fecund forest, into fearsome dungeons built long before the Shining Crusade, and between spiteful villains harboring ancient grudges. Old enemies stand in the heroes' way yet again, but unexpected allies can help turn the rising tide of death and despair. If the heroes are victorious, they can seize the only chance to deny the Whispering Tyrant his greatest weapon and strike him down before he gains the power of a god.
This volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path provides the dramatic conclusion to the Tyrant's Grasp Adventure Path and includes:
"Midwives to Death," a Pathfinder RPG adventure for 16th-level characters, by John Compton.
A massive article celebrating the final Adventure Path volume for the first edition of the Pathfinder RPG. Written by Paizo's developers and designers to close out the first edition with a bang, this article presents new monsters, GM advice, gods both new and revised, staff PCs, a new prestige class, new archetypes, and more! These new rules work with the Tyrant's Grasp Adventure Path or any campaign, and are written by John Compton, Adam Daigle, Eleanor Ferron, Thurston Hillman, James Jacobs, Jason Keeley, Luis Loza, Ron Lundeen, Robert G. McCreary, Erik Mona, Michael Sayre, Owen K.C. Stephens, Mark Seifter, and Linda Zayas-Palmer.
ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-144-3
The Tyrant's Grasp Adventure Path 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 (1.5 MB PDF).
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
If you read all the 1-stars above you might be feeling a little discouraged about this adventure. Having just read them myself, I'm scratching my head about whether they read the same book(s) as I did.
There are some spoilers below, so be warned.
The first half of the adventure takes place in one of the Whispering Tyrant's bunker/barracks where the party has the opportunity to fight and/or intrigue against several powerful undead commanders. There's plenty of room here for RP and even a moral dilemma when a powerful devil offers to remove an undead army from consideration.
After the dungeon, the adventure offers a change of pace in the form of a Wild Hunt choosing them as its prey, but this is a bit of a side note before getting to Absalom, where Tar-Baphon and his armies are engaged with Absalom's defenders. This part of the adventure involves the party striving to taunt the Whispering Tyrant by defeating his lieutenants and driving him berserk with rage and frustration.
The climactic battle deserves some special mention since it seems to be angering many people. I'd like to push back on that a little bit.
Again, SPOILERS:
The final gambit is an echo of Arazni's in Book 4: to provoke the lich into nuking his annoying enemies. For the PCs, their obols were modified in Book 5 to make them amplify positive energy and reflect the Radiant Fire back on Tar-Baphon. In the process, the PCs are destroyed body and soul. Tar-Baphon is not permanently destroyed; though his bid for godhood fails his phylactery is safe and he eventually reforms.
I think this is a bold choice, in a genre where the party usually kills the bad guy and gets an unequivocal victory, having an ending where the heroes sacrifice everything for an incomplete victory has enormous potential for bittersweet storytelling. If that's not your jam, the adventure provides a way out in the form of a magical tree from book 5 acting as a pseudo-phylactery...but I think people should give ending as written some consideration. Having characters not get the power fantasy ending for one campaign is intriguing, and it certainly doesn't warrant the rage its seemed to have inspired.
On the negative side, there are some pacing issues in the last half of the adventure. I also worry that a CR26 final boss fight might be too harsh on the party, even with help from a pair of fairly powerful NPCs and the obols. Mythic has a strong potential to make this a one-sided slaughter, so be careful. That said, on the whole it's a good contribution to the last AP of PF1.
I have a tough time summarizing my complaints with this book, but I want to be as clear as I can, so let me put some things into context. Also there's some spoilers in here, but if you're GMing this they're well worth knowing before you buy this.
You will be returning to Avistan with what essentially amounts to a narrative "doomsday clock" over your head. No, not a hard one like in Wrath of the Righteous, but certainly the fact that the Whispering Tyrant is basically going to win tomorrow is pretty huge. So, with that in mind, let's look at some of the things Paizo wastes pages on while you are (presumably) rushing to save the world:
-An encounter with a wild hunt you're strong enough to fight wanting to "play hunt" with you, along with 5 pages of rules for how to do it.
-gambling with a rawhead
-dining with a Daughter of Urgathoa
-playing undead politics
To say nothing of the utterly baffling pacing of this, it also seems so unbelievably rushed in the places that matter. The whole plot is a mess; literally 2/3rds of the game exist to allow you to do a dungeon, since Tar-Baphon "made his generals retake their vows to him" and then for no particular reason only moved 1/2 his army to Absalom seemingly allow the PC's to enter his spooky dungeon and have something to fight. But in the end, you're expected to fight him alongside your newest friends, who are so important you meet them about 2 hours prior and they don't even have unique stat blocks.
You do not reach level 20, and in the end you die. But not just die; no, you sacrifice your SOULS to stop Tar-Baphon, consigning yourself to oblivion. Now, that's the stuff of legends right there IF IT'S HANDLED WELL, but having just read 2E's world guide, do you know what happens to Tar-Baphon?
He just comes back in a bit and is now scheming away on the Isle of Terror. The Lost Omens guide literally invalidates the actions of this whole AP. The book ends with a throwaway line about "the Whispering Tyrant still being out there woooooooo" before immediately rushing to show off some special creations of the writers on staff, and then it's OFF TO 2E!
This book was an underwhelming mess, poorly paced, badly bloated, and yet somehow unbelievably rushed. I honestly can't believe they allowed one of their most notorious villains to be portrayed like this, and now that he's back it means the entire AP was worth far less than the amount of money I paid for it. If you can, either rewrite this book yourself for your group, or just skip this AP. It's completely meaningless anyways.
I have been very disappointed in 'Tyrant's Grasp', and since a lot of people have criticized it, I did not have high expectations for 'Midwives to Death', either. However, I was positively surprised when I got the module a few days ago. In my opinion all the maps are very good, it's well-written, it has a coherent plot and contains a lot of interesting encounters. If you ask me, this is one of the best AP installments in a long while, along with 'Last Watch' and' It came from Hollow Mountain'.
I think John has done very good job with this adventure, and it's even more impressive when you consider the pressure of writing the last module for the First Edition! :)
Overall, I rather like the adventure, the side bar on how to switch things up was very well done I thought (for the record If I run Tyrant's Grasp I will be using the side bar ending instead).
While this AP has issues in earlier installments, this one isn't among them.
The developer showcase is also really solid though I'm disappointed Mark and Thursty used their space for advice instead of something else, it's still good advice and certainly not worth knocking off a star.
I especially liked the inclusion of Iblydan hero gods, as well Angradd and Nocticula 2.0.
I feel like as long as you let the players now at character creation that this i a different ap where theres no real happy ending i think itll work,
The players I am hoping to get to run this with at some point will, as per my usual practice, be given absolutely minimal information, and I firmly expect them to have figured out most likely ending of chapter 6 from somewhere in the first half of chapter 1, to be on tenterhooks about it all the way through, and to really appreciate how the ending works. Because needing their characters to survive in order to count thwarting the Big Bad as a win is neither something we need to have fun, nor really compatible with how we tend to envision Good. So while I expect I am in a minority, I wanted to register appreciation for an AP that ends that way, and interest in there being more APs where the "good ending" win condition is this far from unambiguous victory in all respects.
I have been very disappointed in Tyrant's Grasp, and since a lot of people have criticized it, I did not have high expectations for Midwives to Death, either. However, I was positively surprised when I got the module a few days ago. If you ask me, this is one of the best AP installments in a long while, along with Last Watch and It came from the Hollow Mountain.
IMO all the maps are very good, it's well-written, it has a coherent plot and contains a lot of interesting encounters. I think John has done very good job with this adventure, and it's even more impressive when you consider the pressure of writing the last module for the First Edition! :)
