The Age of Ashes Adventure Path continues! In defeating the treacherous Cult of Cinders, the heroes discover a nefarious group pulling the cult's strings—a mysterious merchant's guild called the Scarlet Triad. Following clues and utilizing another portal found below their castle on Hellknight Hill, the heroes come to the recently founded nation of Ravounel, where they must stand against the Scarlet Triad as the group attempts to establish an underground slave trade. But as the heroes clash more and more with the Scarlet Triad, it becomes increasingly apparent the slavers have even more sinister plans for the Inner Sea region–plans that must be stopped!
Age of Ashes is the first Adventure Path using the brand new rules for the Pathfinder RPG. This third adventure is for 9th-level characters, and also includes a gazetteer to the newly formed nation of Ravounel, an exploration of the dragons of the world, a wealth of new options for player characters to discover (from magic items, spells, and feats, to a new class archetype), and more than half a dozen new monsters!
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.
- A nice intro. Someone (presumably working on your castle) goes missing, there's a little bit of a scrap. I thought it was interesting because the antagonist knows next to nothing about you, and you know very little about him. HOWEVER....
....the first thing I have to bring up here is: NOWHERE is it explained that the Dreamgate links to Ravounel. I ctrl+f'd all three PDF's and it is not explained anywhere. The party is just supposed to somehow intuit that they can just stargate their way over to Ravounel instead of hoofing it across Isger and Cheliax. How is the party supposed to know? Because they used Eclipse on the Dreamgate beforehand? Okay, but then you would already have dealt with the hags in there and cleaned them out....so yeah. I had some peasant come by and say he noticed while cleaning up their basement gate-room that the carvings on the Dreamgate matched those of a cave he wandered into in Ravounel as a lad.
The Hags/Dreamgate - Oh boy. Be prepared for campaign derailment if you crit-fail that Level 8 Baleful Polymorph! If your party places the dreamstone back in the tree I might have an Azata come by as a reward and un-polymorph anyone who gets stuck that way. Otherwise better pray that your level 5 dispel magic crits because that's the only way you're turning the Cleric back from a bull (true story).
That being said, the Bone Devil lend his services to the highest bidder was a fun little complication and led to some haggling over whether the Witch told him to kill ALL the hags or just TWO. Hilarious and on point for a Devil....though what does a Bone Devil need with gold?
Cypress Point - Save the burning town! Excitement! Tension! Innocents to save! Demons to kill!
All great stuff. The only thing I'd suggest tossing is the boathouse as that encounter is a red herring (the Krooths already killed them!) and the loot is not worth it (a greater thunderstone)
It was nice for my Swashbuckler to claim the ship as a prize, even though that's not in the AP. IT is very odd that the AP doesn't say "oh by the way you can steal the slavers' ship and sail it to Kintargo rather than take a 3 day trip by land".
Thugs & Bruisers become a bit repetitive throughout the rest of the AP -- and right here they struggled to be much of a threat. Same thing with the mercenary sailors, who could barely hit my highest characters AC's.
Kintargo -
The Nidal thing is a whole nothingburger, sadly. I think it was just too much on top of the main plot already. So is the ghosts of Barzhai, which, while a nice callback to the original Hell's Rebels, doesn't really amount to much here. Honestly gives it a kind of Scooby Doo-esque thing going on that I didn't like.
A nice starting encounter at Sunset Imports. Ugh, I hate golems. They never are a threat, just an HP sink. At least it made sense. Most of the warehouse is not worth perusing, just go straight for the prisoner at the very end. The Kalavakas and the ST Bruiser aren't really a threat either. I had the last guy surrender rather than drag things out.
Kite Hill - THIS PLACE WILL KILL YOU. Woooow. Level 13 encounter out of nowhere, holy crap. This thing mauled a party of five with Wall of Ice and Cones of Cold like crazy, and that frost slow effect on top of that? Woof. Very tough fight. Nonny (the NPC) having Inspiring Presence on everyone is almost mandatory if you don't want to be attending a funeral.
Coffeehouse - Mehhhh, the ghost haunting thing didn't really click for me. The haunts were not a threat to a level 10 party and neither were the ghosts. The Rakshasas could've been -- I liked getting the jump on them while they're sipping tea and debating what murder tea goes best with.
The Docur School for Girls - skippable if you were doing things in sequence, but I still enjoyed interacting with Lady Docur!
Tanessen Tower -
6th floor is a speedbump. 7th floor is a grind with TWO alchemical golems (consider reducing it to 1) -- I think this was the wrong place to put this fight as it just draws things out unnecessarily. 8th floor - woof. Knife fight with a caster in a phonebooth. Caster loses. Those Velstracs and thugs can't help him. Sure he can summon fiends but by that point he was already nearly dead. (Alchemical Golems might have made the fight more interesting...should've swapped 'em!)
Summershade Granite Quarry - no notes. A nice finale, it's nice and big, I like the situation with the potential drowning of the captives at the end, etc.
All in all, it's a shame that Paizo has opted to go for a 'noblebright' setting where the S-word is banned, because killing Kalavakas-demons is fun, beating the crap out of slavers is fun, for a GM playing them is fun because they're SO unlikeable, and everyone loves you afterwards. A good AP for feeling like big damn heroes. Your group will be so busy wiping out these unlikeable bastards that you'll forget what the whole metaplot was!
The way in which the players are introduced to their new enemy should leave them chomping at the bit to right some wrongs - and this adventure path delivers. Most of the adventure path works as-is, with flexibility to add in new hooks, tie in character motivations or backstories, or create interesting dynamic situations.
There is a decent amount of fan service that will really only matter to players who played through the Hell's Rebels PF1 adventure path, but this is trivial to cut out and replace with whatever else might suit you better.
Sandwiched between the much more exotic locales of book 2 and book 4, I was a little worried the standard medieval town setting of book 3 would feel like a bit of letdown, especially with the more linear plot it sports. However (possibly because I overdid the book 2 hex crawl), my players seemed to enjoy book 3 as a nice change of pace. It went by fairly quick (probably half of what book 2 took) with decent pacing and had a few memorable NPCs as well that left my group happy with it.
As others have stated, for better or worse the adventure is pretty linear. The PC's can try to do some things out of order, but this will mostly just result in them showing up too late to help which obviously doesn't feel good but does make narrative sense at least. But again for my group, coming off the hex crawl in book 2, this wasn't a big deal. I can see why some groups don't like it but my players generally seemed satisfied with the story beats and conclusion.
Having not played Hell's Rebels, my group couldn't really appreciate Kintargo as much as I think the author does. But working in the Nidalese aspect of it did make the setting more interesting. I tried to work Halleka Shadeborn in a bit more to give some exposition on the state of Ravounel, what Nidal is doing in the area, and also to make the Triad's goals a little more comprehensible. I do think setting the main story beats closer to the Nidalese border, maybe in like a smaller border town might have made for a slightly more interesting story, as well as made it easier to explain why Ravounel was struggling so badly to respond. But what is there works well enough.
The main downside of book 3 I feel is that at times it relies an awful lot on narrative convenience in a few spots. I think as the GM it's best to adjust some of the story beats so you don't rely as much on 'the PC's arrive just as the Triad are attacking and stop them.' But it wasn't hard to change these scenes a bit to not rely as much on the PCs coincidentally arriving in a very narrow time window. One other minor issue is that you do face the same enemy types repeatedly in some cases, which makes sense in context but gutting the same 2~3 types of slavers does get a little ho-hum by the end.
Well, it's said to be a CLASS archetype, so unless it doesn't mean we are getting or very first class archetype as per the CRB, I don't think it would be the Silver Raven. I mean, why would it be limited to a class?
That's an error then. It's an archetype of what was a prestige class in 1st edition.
Well, it's said to be a CLASS archetype, so unless it doesn't mean we are getting or very first class archetype as per the CRB, I don't think it would be the Silver Raven. I mean, why would it be limited to a class?
That's an error then. It's an archetype of what was a prestige class in 1st edition.
Dragon Disciple, maybe? *-* It would be really cool to have it introduced to the new edition alongside this dragon themed AP.
Well, it's said to be a CLASS archetype, so unless it doesn't mean we are getting or very first class archetype as per the CRB, I don't think it would be the Silver Raven. I mean, why would it be limited to a class?
That's an error then. It's an archetype of what was a prestige class in 1st edition.
Dragon Disciple, maybe? *-* It would be really cool to have it introduced to the new edition alongside this dragon themed AP.
Or something related to Ravounel indeed.
It's very Ravounel-related. Not so much dragon-related.
What can you tell us about the article covering the dragon? Is it about the many dragon families or about iconic dragons? How much does it cover? Is it big?
Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
The Gold Sovereign wrote:
What can you tell us about the article covering the dragon? Is it about the many dragon families or about iconic dragons? How much does it cover? Is it big?
It's six pages long and covers the history and nature of dragons on Golarion. The five metallic and five chromatic dragons get brief write ups on their personalities and in some cases how they fit into the world. The other five true dragons types are listed briefly, but little more than the names of the types are covered (esoteric, imperial, outer, planar, & primal).
Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Vorsk, Follower or Erastil wrote:
Feros wrote:
Nope to all! It is
** spoiler omitted **
Does it offer options to many classes or does it kinda feel like a specific build would like it more than others?
Options for multiple classes, but emphasis on sneaking people and protecting them in combat. Stealth combat types are best complimented.
Jen Page
Media Specialist, SmiteWorks USA (Fantasy Grounds)
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Hello, all! This is now available for purchase from Fantasy Grounds or on Steam. Sync your account first to get it a discount equivalent to the PDF Price ($17.99)
It's kind of weird that it is out on Fantasy Grounds before it is even out on Paizo so that many of us can even get it. But cool...
Jen Page wrote:
Hello, all! This is now available for purchase from Fantasy Grounds or on Steam. Sync your account first to get it a discount equivalent to the PDF Price ($17.99)
Not sure what the underlying issue is, but: I extract the images from Paizo's PDFs for use in a virtual tabletop. (Lately I use PDF Candy Desktop Pro.) However, when it comes to AP #146 and #147, the program now gets a few pages in (page 28 in #146 and page 6 in #147) and hangs, making it impossible to grab the rest of the images. This is not affecting the Starfinder releases from the same months.
Bone devils have six round lasting poison where stage 3 has 1 hour before you roll for it again O_o; I think that is probably an error?
Also, huh, Rusalka have been changed from naked lady fays that drown you into androgynous less human looking fay.(that still drowns you)
Bone devil poison: The penalty to being coerced lasts an hour, and is a separate effect that triggers once you hit stage three poison. Sorry about the confusion.
And yeah, we changed the look of the rusalka because the "Pretty girls are scary monsters" trope is pretty much covered by the succubus already; no need for every other fey to follow in lockstep.
BTW, what is picture on page 4 referring to? Is it the nightmare hazard from one place?
I really want to review this, but this adventure is more focused on investigating the Scarlet Triad and taking them out rather than social stuff or other stuff I really love to gush about even without knowing how mechanics work in practice :'D So I kinda feel like I should wait and run this one first before reviewing this.
Bone devils have six round lasting poison where stage 3 has 1 hour before you roll for it again O_o; I think that is probably an error?
Also, huh, Rusalka have been changed from naked lady fays that drown you into androgynous less human looking fay.(that still drowns you)
Bone devil poison: The penalty to being coerced lasts an hour, and is a separate effect that triggers once you hit stage three poison. Sorry about the confusion.
And yeah, we changed the look of the rusalka because the "Pretty girls are scary monsters" trope is pretty much covered by the succubus already; no need for every other fey to follow in lockstep.
Also they have more going for them than “Nymphs, BUT EVIL” ^w^
is Rusty Mae a variant Annis Hag or would she qualify as a new "Rust Hag" or something?
She's an annis hag, but a little more powerful than the norm.
In 1st edition terms, she'd be an annis hag with a few class levels, or maybe just a few extra Hit Dice. In 2nd edition, we don't have to force her into a role like that and can just expand on her as needed.
That makes sense and was my first guess, but Annis Hags don't usually do well with more than one in a coven if I recall (then again, this coven isn't doing great, so...). A Rust Hag seemed like a kind of cool idea, though.
Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
I noticed on my downloads page that this volume—along with some other parts of this adventure path—was apparently updated on January 3, 2020. What has changed?