So the Cauldron adventure path is two issues from finishing its wild ride. My players and I have absolutely loved it, how about yours? How do you think that the path will end? Which installment of the path has been your favorite advneture?
So the Cauldron adventure path is two issues from finishing its wild ride. My players and I have absolutely loved it, how about yours? How do you think that the path will end? Which installment of the path has been your favorite advneture?
I have only managed to run the first installement. However, I have been reading Lazybones story hour on ENWorld. I must admit the the Test of the Smoking Eye is my least favorite until now. there is something about planar adventures that I just can't get my head around. I really liked the first three adventures. Ah the joys of low to mid-level adventuring ! :)
I for one as a DM loved the adventure path. My players just finished the Lords of Oblivion. Honestly, their reactions have ranged from passive acceptance to outright dislike for the adventure path. They felt at times that the challanges were very overpowered for characters of their level. EG. in LoO, the party of 13 or 14th level adventurers faces off against a handful of the members of the Cagerights EL20! They got slaughtered. And these are smart players of over 20 years for some of them. There were varying times throughout the path that I felt they were outmatched simply in power terms. All in all, I loved the adventure Path story but I wonder how much of it got playtested in the intermediate levels.
They felt at times that the challanges were very overpowered for characters of their level. EG. in LoO, the party of 13 or 14th level adventurers faces off against a handful of the members of the Cagerights EL20! They got slaughtered. There...
Intersting...I felt that this same encounter would be exceptionally challenging, if not deadly, for my players as well, but they did well.
So the Cauldron adventure path is two issues from finishing its wild ride. My players and I have absolutely loved it, how about yours? How do you think that the path will end? Which installment of the path has been your favorite advneture?
Rauol! Nice to see you over here (from EnWorld).
How am I feeling? After I read the synopsis of the final installment, I have lost the excitement for waiting for the next one... I felt the same way after seeing Return of the King. But I am still excited about running the story through its end.
My favorite adventure? I liked The Demonskar Legacy for its brilliant mix of city encounters, dungeon-delving, and hero-saving (almost). I also liked Secrets of the Soul Pillars for finally bringing to light a lot of information.
As for my players' reactions:
I ran one group up through Test of the Smoking Eye, and they were totally in love with the story, but the party broke up when everyone moved within five weeks of each other. My current group is in Lords of Oblivion, and they have really taken to the setting and the story.
In our last session, they completed the encounter at House Rhiavadi. My group decided to role-play their way through the encounter, and they did exceptionally well.
(Feng: when you say "they got slaughtered" do you mean that you had a TPK? That would stink for a group of PCs to have gone to 13th and 14th level.)
Each party member made up a new name for his character, and everyone had to use them during the encounter. I made sure everyone talked to most of the people there, making disguise checks and what not.
The funniest part of the encounter: the Fighter/Warmage went disguised as a bard, and one of the other players suggested that he perform. He was just joking, but I made the player make a roll (with no ranks in perform, but a +8 to Cha) and he ended up with a 23! But everyone stopped breathing for a few seconds when the suggestion was taken seriously, and I made everyone roll an additional Bluff check to compensate.
Through their role playing, they discovered that they were responsible for bringing Zenith to the Cagewrights (jaws dropped, Bluff checks required...) and that Vhalantru was preparing himself for the ritual already.
They did a great job.
The other funny thing about last session: as a DM, I often roll a single initiative roll and single saving throws when the party is against similar bad guys (to speed up combat). So, when the party (with three 13th-level casters) went blazing into the safe house, the rogues made their saves against fireballs, chain lightning and others, and took NO DAMAGE. Not bad for a group of CR 3s!
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Well, first of all I love the Adventure Path Series and my Players feel very at home in Cauldron.
However, I jzst have finished Flood Season and my players were far away from Level6. So I have thrown in the adventure TAMMERAUT'S FATE to get them to level6 for the Umber Hulk. They loved this little pearl of an adventure and it made y good addition to the adventure path series.
IMC the players managed to get Sacrem resurrected. When I am thinking about the next installemants I sometimes really think those will be overpowered and anihilate my group, but then - I had encounters were I thought the same and my group managed to get away without a scratch.
I am very excited about the Demonskar Legacy (I loved to prepare it) and Lords of Oblivion! Those are great adventures!
So I have thrown in the adventure TAMMERAUT'S FATE to get them to level6 for the Umber Hulk. They loved this little pearl of an adventure and it made y good addition to the adventure path series.
Great idea. I loved that adventure as well.
Hey Jake. Good to see another ENWorlder here on the Dungeon Boards.
Thanks for sharing the symopsis of your groups experience in House Rhiavadi. That was very interesting, I would have loved to have seen it.
I really likes Demonskar Legacy as well, but I think my favorite installment was the first. Life's Bazaar was such great start for the campaign - plus I love Dark Creepers and Dark Stalkers.
My group has just finished Foundation of Flame and are itching to get to the bottom of the Cagewright's schemes.
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So the Cauldron adventure path is two issues from finishing its wild ride. My players and I have absolutely loved it, how about yours? How do you think that the path will end? Which installment of the path has been your favorite advneture?
I have to say that for the most part I have loved the Adventure Path, and my players would agree. Currently we are on the Lords of Oblivion portion of the path and they are easiy going to finish that.
However, I had HUGE problems with "Thirteen Cages". I for one found the adventure to be subpar in comparison to all the other installments. For starters, there is barely a set-up chapter. Jenya simply tells the PCs, "Okay, I've done some divination and you need to go to place X and fight people X in X number of hours." It almost seems like how a video game would be run. Also how does divination suddenly work on the Cagewrights? Past installments have blatantly told us that the PCs can get any direct information about them through such spells, yet it seems that an NPC randomly can just for the sake of a hook. It just seems like a week set-up.
I also thought the villians were rather one-dimensional in this particular adventure. Alright, the PCs have defeated Vhlantru after almost a year of game-time and now they fight...7 people they've never met/heard of before. Also, shouldn't they ALL be waiting by the tree of shackled souls?
Finally, it seemed like you guys forgot to tell the DMs a few key plot points. Its seems like the Cagewrights worship Adimarchus (mispelled), but when were we the DMs going to be given this piece of information. Also, two issues from the end I still can't name half of the Cagewrights. Is Embril one? Maybe, but you never really tell us.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the Adventure Path. Its absolutely genius, but this last adventure looked like it was written by my little sister...
Sean
As for my characters' experience with House Rhiavadi, yes it was a total party kill... sadly you can imagine the reaction of five guys sitting around the table that had put a tremendous amount of work into 13th level PCs.
I would have loved to have seen them try an alternate means to get into the house. As it is, they cast Prying Eyes and investigated the observatory, climbed up through the windows there, made a load of noise and alerted the house. They ended up encountering the party guests without even hearing the information from the speech (extremely disappointing IMO), while they were outside the meeting room planning their assault. They of course were not aware that the guests knew about their presence. While they may have had a chance at first, hope was lost quickly when the party sorceror/palemaster tried to enter the room past the sweeping greatclub of the ogremage, dropping him in three AoO. It was sad. The presence of Hate, the Dread Wraith, didnt help. Needless to say, it was catastrophic.
Personally, my group pretty much nuked the Legion of Doom room in "Lords of Oblivion." IMC, Skaven has been a thorn in the sides of the party since he was introducted. Well, he was attending the meeting when the party wandered in, not disguised, but pretending to be a late arriving group showing up for the meeting. Well, Skaven went ballistic, combat started, the party's wizard won initiative, and proceeded to Sudden Quicken/Sudden Empower/Fireball and then Empowered Fireball. Most of the room failed their saves and turned into ash. It was ugly.
While we're talking about LOD, anyone else notice that there was absolutely no room for a meeting in that room, much less a combat? My figures were lining the walls, and counting the two Large creatures, there was barely room for someone to stand in there, much less fight.
Squid
Creative Director
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One thing to keep in mind about the Cagewrights in "Thirteen Cages" is that they're all a little (or a lot) crazy. They may know that the PCs are on the way, they just don't care or don't think the PCs can do much about stopping the ritual.
Of course, if that doesn't do it for you, it's simple enoguh to have the Cagewrights present in the Fiery Sanctum to wait for the PCs in the final encounter area. Fighting them all at once is an EL 22 or so encounter, though, so you can expect a group of four 16th-17th level characters to have a bit of trouble with the fight!
One thing to keep in mind about the Cagewrights in "Thirteen Cages" is that they're all a little (or a lot) crazy. They may know that the PCs are on the way, they just don't care or don't think the PCs can do much about stopping the ritual.
Thanks for stopping by and joining in the discussion, James. I think that the tactics for the Cagewrights in "Thriteen Cages" are interesting (even comical in some instances), and it should be fun to determine, on the fly, how some of them will react to the PC's intrusion.
My players will be so happy with the fact that they are finally able to confront the Cagewrights, that they will care less if thier tactics are "strange"...
By the way, my players still HATE Tongueater with a passion. He really handed it to them in the Lucky Monkey. Thanks.
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I wish my players would get more into it... they seemed to lose a lot of their drive in the final battle of "Life's Bazaar." Kazmojen critted the barbarian/monk for 41 damage right off the bat, and they promptly fled the scene. I'm just trying to decide if I want to make Kazmojen a recurring villain or not.
I don't know how far you've gotten, Gremlin, but I had a similar problem...two slain and three more dropped into negatives and captured by Kazmojan. I resolved it by having the StormBlades catch word of the PC's failure, following it up, and beating Kazmojan. Subsequently, I had them very thoroughly lording it over the PCs that they succeeded where the PCs failed. It makes the relationship with the SBs much more...lively.
I love the adventure path (what little I got to DM anyway) I only got to "Zenith Trajetory" but I would have to say my players and I personally liked "Flood Season" the best. I liked the idea of th Ebon Triad. TongueEater was cool, but my psionic PC went invisible, disrupted him and his whole party of baboons into sleep and then coup-de-graced the lot of them. The psion thought it was hilarious of course. I like Tarkiltar personally...