Toil and Trouble! After stopping a poisonous plot against the living population of Graydirge, the player characters must seek out the hag pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Yet hags congregate in covens, and facing off against the insidious hag coven called the Graveclaw leads to a race across the undead-haunted nation of Geb. From shadowed forests to an undersea temple, and from rusted-out factories to university lecture halls, the characters must investigate the trails of misery and fear the hags leave in their wake. The characters must vanquish the Graveclaw to protect the residents of Geb—or end up stewing in a hag’s cauldron!
Graveclaw is a Pathfinder adventure for four 4th-level characters. The adventure continues the Blood Lords Adventure Path, a six-part monthly campaign in which the characters rise from skilled troubleshooters to join the Blood Lords who rule a nation of the dead. The adventure also includes an article exposing the secrets of hag covens and plenty of new rules for fighting against hags. New spells and new items complete the witch’s brew in the coven’s cookpot!
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: 978-1-64078-453-6
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
APs played: GM for books 1-6 of Extinction Curse, GM for books 1-3 of Ruby Phoenix, Player for books 1-2 of Edgewatch, Player for books 1-2 of Strength of Thousands
Book 2 is probably the most controversial book IMO of this AP. Overall it's a really good investigative mystery that sets up the players well to show their loyalties to the country as well as introduce fantastic NPCs throughout the chapters. The first enemy the players go after is the best by far. They are extremely well written and capture the sinister vibe of the AP well.
The worst part of this AP is the thing I am the most torn on. At the start the players are offered a ritual to provide them negative healing. This makes sense and gives the players a way to purchase healing items that would be available in the undead country as positive energy is illegal normally. However, this introduces a huge problem for the rest of the AP. I do not know if this ritual being included was not communicated with the rest of the writers of this adventure or what happened, but for the rest of the adventure, each book has a couple encounters where the only damage the enemies can do is negative damage. Which means the players are completely immune to the encounter. I believe if the players are playing undead, this should be a nice unforeseen benefit they get. However, since this was just blanket negative healing given to the party, the rest of the adventure should have accounted for this. Many tense situations end up being treated like a joke since the players can just walk through groups of enemies with no penalties. I recommend keeping some lower stakes negative only encounters as is to let the players feel powerful, but some should be switched to doing cold damage or something else so they aren't complete jokes.
In the end this was still a very enjoyable book but I have to knock this down a star because the ritual above causes so many problems for the rest of the adventure.
just here to offset the guy 1- & 2-starring all the PF2E products
The Good:
—The first chapter has a nice “old world fairy tale” vibe to it.
—Both Sallowshore and Pakged are creepy towns that emphasize (in different ways) that this adventures it taking place in Geb, a creepy nation of undead, not your typical fantasy-locale.
—A nice variety of encounters/set-ups, with a mix of dungeon-exploration, infiltration/skill-challenges, and social role-playing/skill-challenges.
—Some great back-matter in this one: both the article on Covens and the Adventure Toolbox offer some nifty plot hooks for GMs to use to build old-world fairly tale style adventures around.
The Bad:
—Not really bad, but it seems like the relationship between Tobias Highridge and Nepenthe should have had more of a role to play in the plot.
The Ugly/Pretty:
—The maps and art are up to Paizo’s usual high standards. (I particularly like the art for the Shroud.) Nothing to complain about here.
There are some strange choices of battlefield in this adventure, given what the players are expected to be skilled at.
Chapter 1 takes place in a forest and has the players fight a couple fey, despite the player's guide explicitly telling the players that nature and survival are unlikely to be useful skills. This isn't too much of a big deal, since it's only a minor aspect of one chapter.
Chapter 2, on the other hand, has an entire dungeon of underwater combat in an otherwise totally dry campaign. Unless your each of martials spends (minimum) 11 gp and an action at the start of every combat, you are going to TPK. I recommend either:
- handwaving the underwater flat-footed rule
- having one of the powerful NPCs in town give your players access to a temporary swim speed as an additional favor for their sidequest
- offset the "price of admission" by giving the players more treasure
This stuff aside, I think the storyline of tracking down and killing the coven one by one is great. It's also a great excuse for your players to see more of Geb in preparation for ruling it.
Hmmm... with the release of VER10 today... I suspect your 11AM release time (wich was 3 hours ago) was revised... so what is the new projected release date?
Hmmm... with the release of VER10 today... I suspect your 11AM release time (wich was 3 hours ago) was revised... so what is the new projected release date?
A post just went up on Reddit to say that it is available now.
Will we get a foundry version for the rest of the adventure path as well? By the way, the one from the first book was super! 31st August maybe is wrong. I cannot find it in your shop.
Will we get a foundry version for the rest of the adventure path as well? By the way, the one from the first book was super! 31st August maybe is wrong. I cannot find it in your shop.
