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:
Well, thanks to forum bugs, first review was lost. So, trying again...
There were elements to this AP that were definitely interesting and novel. However, they can't counter balance the disappointment I feel with the ending of this AP.
We got wind of what was to come midway through Book 5. The party is destined for a soul destroying TPK that you aren't coming back from, barring GM leniency on using a sidebar mentioned in Book 5. But you get to be heroes!! You stop the BBEG!! Your names will be remembered forever!!
Well no. The campaign just ends. The BBEG isn't permanently destroyed. The world of 1E is ending and 2E will appear, what, 10 years down the road, with our BBEG (and/or his minions) as a part of it. Hope your players haven't invested much their characters.
So - in a nutshell, subscribers pretty much just paid for a 6 installment AP aimed at setting the stage for their 2E rollout. Yes, I'm that cynical. Return of the Runelords is part of this too - but frankly, that at least had some options for permanently ending a lot of bad guys - or at least the ones Paizo didn't want to bring into Golarion 2E. This one? No such luck on permanently finishing off Tar Baphon.
1E was a fun ride. Too bad it goes out on what I feel is a real low note for an AP. It could have been so much better.
Paizo should have left their edition world changing for a 2E supplement or a PFS scenario and not used this AP as a way to do so.
Tyrant's Grasp seems pointless and hollow precisely because that is all it was - window dressing setup for 2E.
This book feels like it was written for PFS, where random players/player characters who don't know each other, have little direct investment in the plot, and aren't going to face any personal consequences have shown up to fight a weekly baddie. It'd be a fine PFS book. For the climax of PF1e and the final defeat of the Whispering Tyrant, it's lacking.
Like the rest of this campaign, the players are shuffled along a very specific path with no care for their options, no room for ingenuity, and complete expectation in having the most uninvested, generic party with no ties to anything beyond a vague need to fight Tar-Baphon.
The book's boring. It's a pointless dungeon crawl where your players can talk to some worthless undead if they want, but why? There's zero roleplay involved and they serve no purpose.
Minor spoiler:
There's no climactic battle with Tar-Baphon. Your players just bait him into using the McGuffin. Once that happens, it ends. Period. In more ways than one.
Do not spring the other side of this ending on your players. I would murder my DM if they tried this. My own players would never play with me again. However cute you might think this to be, either tell them at the start of character creation or don't use this book.
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! :)
