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Pathfinder Adventure Path #202: Severed at the Root (Wardens of Wildwood 2 of 3)

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Pathfinder Adventure Path #202: Severed at the Root (Wardens of Wildwood 2 of 3)
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Under surprising new leadership, the Wildwood Lodge begins a campaign of violence. Shocked, the PCs and their allies form a new lodge in exile to oppose this new regime. As they recruit new friends to their cause, the PCs must deny the Wildwood Lodge a powerful relic created by the renegade druid Ghorus, all while investigating the strange, primal magic the Wildwood Lodge has uncovered. If the PCs are to prevail, they will need to track down one of the Verduran Forest’s most dangerous inhabitants and convince her to aid their cause—or ensure she cannot aid their enemy.

Severed at the Root is a wilderness-themed Pathfinder adventure for four 8th-level characters. The adventure continues the Wardens of Wildwood Adventure Path, a three-part monthly campaign in which a group of adventurers navigate a tricky balance between idyllic wilderness, a hungry nation, and primal forces beyond the natural world. This volume also includes a look at manifestations of the Plane of Wood, an ecology of the godlike green men, several new magical items, and new monstrous threats!

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.

Written by: Jessica Catalan, John Compton, and Alexi Greer.

ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-587-8

The Wardens of Wildwood Adventure Path is sanctioned for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure Path and Chronicle Sheets are available as a free download (656 KB PDF).

Note: This product is part of the Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscription.

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Severed Continuity: A Disjointed Follow-Up to Pactbreaker

2/5 —

Wardens of Wildwood: Severed at the Root struggles with narrative cohesion, failing to build on the foundation laid in Pactbreaker. The primary conflict feels disconnected from the original plot threads which call for direct conflict giving way for a research subsystem that is immensely unfun and made to waste the player’s resources. The artifact the players find to further the plot can never be used or is mentioned again in the narrative. The tension between the Wildwood Lodge and external forces is largely forgotten save for a few skirmishes that do not have a satisfying conclusion. New antagonists appear abruptly, while unresolved arcs from the first installment, like the assassination, are sidelined. The pacing also stumbles, often rushing through character moments that should carry emotional weight through the overwhelming number of NPCs that join your resistance. Player agency is at an all time low, even further than the conclusion of the previous book. The main antagonist doesn’t show themselves once despite their audacious and confusing reveal.


Deleted review

2/5 —

I wrote a big long review only to have the site delete before posting. This is a bad chapter in the AP. Prepare to do most of the work DMs as you salvage whatever you can to create a plausible and fun story/encounters.

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Paizo Employee Sales & eCommerce Assistant
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Announced for May! Product images and descriptions are not final and are subject to change. :)
Dark Archive
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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

oh hey conrasu

Also wait Ghorus is actually getting expanded on besides him being creator of Ghoran? :O Interesting

oh hyped to actually see conrasu in something, if thats actually the final cover art and not just a placeholder
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Conrasu outside of the Expanse and Ghorus lore, interesting interesting.

I wonder if this AP is one of the events hinted at, at the end of Stolen Fate.

I like!
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition Subscriber

Correct me if I'm wrong, I thought Ghorus dissapeared or died!? It's Awesome how they are expanding on that.
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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Just got my PDF of this and there's some neat stuff in here. I wasn't expecting to get two new barbarian instincts from this AP. (Druids, kineticists and plant/aradande/wood ancestries also get some attention)
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Perses13 wrote:
Just got my PDF of this and there's some neat stuff in here. I wasn't expecting to get two new barbarian instincts from this AP. (Druids, kineticists and plant/aradande/wood ancestries also get some attention)

TWO?!

Mind talking about them with us? That sounds very cool!
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Toolbox contents spoilers pls
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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Ezekieru wrote:
Perses13 wrote:
Just got my PDF of this and there's some neat stuff in here. I wasn't expecting to get two new barbarian instincts from this AP. (Druids, kineticists and plant/aradande/wood ancestries also get some attention)

TWO?!

Mind talking about them with us? That sounds very cool!

Instincts:
There's a backmatter article (not the toolbox) that is a bunch of plant/wood/decay themed character options.

The two barbarian instincts are Decay Instinct and Ligneous Instinct Barbarian. Decay Barb is interested in aiding rot and decay for new growth and you grow fungus or rot when you rage. Ligneous Instinct is a wood-themed barbarian that sprouts bark plates on themselves when they rage.

I found both really neat thematically although Decay seemed a little underwhelming in its mechanics.

More backmatter stuff:
There's also two new druid orders, Spore and Cultivation Order, which are basically variants of Leaf druid. And then a bunch of feats for a few other primal based things. My favorite is an 18th level kineticist feat that lets you summon a whomping willow.

Very interesting!

Spoiler:
I'm surprised to hear they're adding new Kinetecist feats. But that's very exciting! And the new barbarian instincts sound cool. What's the new option for ardandes?
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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
ornathopter wrote:
Very interesting! ** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
There's around 10 new ancestry feats that require you to have the ardande, plant, or wood trait to get. There's not really a unified theme other than being plant based. The ones that stood out to me was Caustic Nectar, which gives you a ranged attack that deals acid damage, and Pollinate, which lets you emit a cloud of pollen to become concealed after being hit.
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Perses13 wrote:
Ezekieru wrote:
Perses13 wrote:
Just got my PDF of this and there's some neat stuff in here. I wasn't expecting to get two new barbarian instincts from this AP. (Druids, kineticists and plant/aradande/wood ancestries also get some attention)

TWO?!

Mind talking about them with us? That sounds very cool!

Instincts: ** spoiler omitted **

More backmatter stuff: ** spoiler omitted **

I see, I'm pretty excited to see them myself!

Spoiler:
Could you tell me what the Druid Orders are about? I'm guessing Spore is supposed to be the mushroom/fungus related order, but I could be wrong. And Cultivation could be a lot of things, not gonna lie. Elaboration on those would be appreciated!
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Response to Ezekieru:
Cultivation Order's pitch seems to be "landscaping druid". You're all about pruning and nurturing plants to grow properly. Spore Druid is all about fungi like you guessed. Their anathemas are slightly modified versions of Leaf druid anathemas.

Mechanically they're variants of Leaf Order druids, and they qualify for Leaf order feats. They get different skills and Spore gets a new focus spell but otherwise they're the same as Leaf druid. There's also a 6th level feat for each order that gives them a new focus spell. I love the Cultivation one called hedge prison, where you can encase a creature in dense bushes.
Perses13 wrote:

Response to Ezekieru: ** spoiler omitted **

Very cool!

Final Thoughts:
From what it sounds like here and in other places I've asked, it seems that the new Barbarian Instincts don't have the usual Level 6/Level 12 feats that build off of the subclass. Unless they're coming in Book 3 of the AP, I'm just gonna go off of the fact that both of these new Instincts use the same Rage damage amounts as Giant Instinct as a basis to also give them access to Giant's Stature and Titan's Stature. Will probably flavor it as them "growing" as a tree/fungus would magically.

So what beasties are in the backmatter? And what's the Green Man article like?
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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Benjamin Tait wrote:
So what beasties are in the backmatter? And what's the Green Man article like?

New Beasties!

Eyelet; weird flying eyeball that can serve as either a spy device-type critter or swarm for some anti-personal evil goodness
Glitterspore; Continues last issue's sub-theme of sinister fungi that don't quite look like fungi... and that's all I'm gonna say about that
Putrifier; weird plant/fungal/undead... thing Looks like a zombie Ghoran, which has interesting implications since according to in-game lore Ghorans didn't look like they presently do until several 'generations' after Ghorus created them & Putrifiers were created by him during his war against Taldor, which predated his creation of the progenitor Ghorans by years if not decades...
Woodblessed & Woodwarp; lore-wise, these are both template creatures & part of Ruzadoya's forces. Only Woodblessed actually get a template however & even that feels somewhat incomplete, it's enough to explain how the example creature works but it seems to imply there will/can be more options, possibly in the next issue. Woodwarp just gets two examples of what their 'finished product' are, one if it happens to a small-sized humanoid & one if it happens to a medium-sized one. Thematically, it feels like somebody asked 'what if we took the fleshwarp idea, but instead of magic doing the warping, it was woodmagic?...'

Green Men!!
It's kind of like the old deity articles, but since Green Men (non-gendered, you can have green women, but they are still called green men) function as kind of arboreal (the concept, not the creature) 'genius loci', that isn't really surprising.
In some ways, they are kind of god-tier leshies, from a highly simplistic perspective. They form naturally when an ecosystem manages to accumulate enough magical power, psychic resonance, so on & such-like.
They can even have Clerics! We are given eight examples, four with mechanics for if one wants to play a cleric of a Green Man

"Fleshwarp but wood magic" sounds interesting - and given that we have Fleshwarp PC options, do you think it's too much to hope there might be a Woodwarp ancestry sometime? In case someone wants to go all Swamp Thing and the ardande/leshy/ghoran options simply don't have enough body horror.
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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Note to the staff: Koata's statblock on page 10 has her alignment in it.
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Do we know when the foundry module for this will be released?
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ZoomDrake wrote:
Do we know when the foundry module for this will be released?

I asked this question on the Foundry Discord server this afternoon and was told that it's not on their end and probably a Paizo related delay because of PaizoCon tomorrow/this weekend.

Niktorak wrote:
ZoomDrake wrote:
Do we know when the foundry module for this will be released?
I asked this question on the Foundry Discord server this afternoon and was told that it's not on their end and probably a Paizo related delay because of PaizoCon tomorrow/this weekend.

Ah, that makes sense, I'll just be patient until then.

Grand Archive
2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Yesh, for the current APs, the modules are made by a company Paizo "contracted". (I use quotation marks cause I'm not sure of the details. Might be anything between "asked informally" or "have actual signed agreements". XD )
Evan Tarlton wrote:
Note to the staff: Koata's statblock on page 10 has her alignment in it.

Also is it supposed to be referencing bestiary 6

Grand Archive
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Goggalore wrote:
Evan Tarlton wrote:
Note to the staff: Koata's statblock on page 10 has her alignment in it.
Also is it supposed to be referencing bestiary 6

It's Bestiary, page 6, because of the elite template

Elfteiroh wrote:
Goggalore wrote:
Evan Tarlton wrote:
Note to the staff: Koata's statblock on page 10 has her alignment in it.
Also is it supposed to be referencing bestiary 6
It's Bestiary, page 6, because of the elite template

Thank you that makes so much more sense

Dataphiles

Don't forget to add the button that takes you to the Foundry module.
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Any word from Paizo on the mechanical problems and dropped plot threads of this AP?
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