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Just thought I start a new thread if it hasn't been started before or new posters haven't seen it. Basically I am curious to see how some people have changed the Adventure Path from the tiniest cosmetic changes to the major adventure changes.
I have set my campaign in the Forgotten Realms so obviously the Gods are different but I also changed:
- The Striders of Fharlagn into Harpers
- The name of the Last Laugh guild to The Harlequins
- and I am thinking of changing the name of Jzadirune cause I simply hate it, Blidgenstone, now that was a good gnome city name.
- Also my parties actions will mean the Ruphus incident doesn't occur so I coming up with something else as the party cleric went to the temple of St Cuthbert (Tyr) as soon as he entered Cauldron and learnt of the kidnappings.
I'll add more as we make our way through the adventure path.
Spidey
I made a few small changes, i changed the striders into the striders of selune, adding shensen to thier ranks. The leader merthian (spelt wrong as dont have magazine to hand) is a member of the harpers and in control of the striders but not a strider him self Make sense :)
I also made alek tercival into alix a female paladin mainly to stike up a love interest with the partys cleric, to make it moe painful when she was killed.
i also had the party encounter some dream orbs which over the course of the adventures i have given my players some abstract dream sequences of possible future encounters they may face from forthcoming modules, but in a way so that no all they dream will come true. Which has had the effect of keeping them ingaged and affraid to go to sleep :)
I actually placed my Shackled City in Eberron I started the campaign recently. One thing I changed were the classes of some of the characters. For instance, I made Frieja Doorgan from Thirteen Cages an Artificer isted of a conjurer. I replaced the church of St. Cuthbert with the Silver Flame. I also changed the church of Wee Jas to the Blood of Vol. The Striders of Fharlagn are now just the Striders. The churched of Pelor, and Kord were changed to churched of corrispoding dieties in Eberron. I changed some of the monsters in Flood Season to be more Eberronian and slapped the whole campaig in Xen' Drik. Minor altercations were made to the planes, I left Carceri, the Abyss and the Mirror of Planes the same, it would have been too difficult to change. I have begun to use dream sequences also, although one of my PCs is a Warforged, therefor dosen't sleep, they recieve the occasioal dream from Adimarchus himself.
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Whoa Silver Circle! Alek Tercival a female! What a stroke of pure genius!
My group are all male and the Cleric of Tyr is an Aasimar, making Alek a female (called Alex) with short blond hair will get him interested since he (the player) goes for women of that description (ala Charlize Theron in The Astronauts Wife).
He will be so crushed when she dies heh heh heh...
Most. Evil. Plan. Ever!
Thanks dude!
And God bless the Internet! and America! oh an Australia, since I live there.
Spidey
Dont forget the UK, everyone forgets the UK. SOB SOB SOB
Dont forget the UK, everyone forgets the UK. SOB SOB SOB
why do you supose that is?
:D
Okay, let's see, this might take some serious recollection prowess...
First, based on the group's character descriptions, I had the first five start as down-on-their-luck couriers and caravan guards, escorting a merchant train through the Hellfurnaces and the Tors (Southwestern Greyhawk locale). They were attacked by a band of norkers en route (barbaric goblins with tough, thorny skins - nat AC 17), and although they drove the norkers off, the norkers did enough damage that by the time the group reached Cauldron, the caravan-master couldn't afford to keep them on as employees and had to let them go -- leaving them stranded and unemployed in a strange town. As a basic intro plot device, it worked.
Then, for the kidnappings, one of the PCs got directly involved. It seemed that the reason that Moonhawk, the half-drow Sorcerer/Rogue, was headed toward Cauldron was to visit his estranged human father. I added Daddy to the list of kidnap victims, and Moonhawk couldn't track the kidnappers down fast enough, dragging his fellow would-be adventurers with him.
Embryl Aloustiani is made into a spooky, mysterious, and darkly powerful ally - relatively benevolent, although not overly helpful. She is not a member of the Cagewrights, and does not know of her temple's involvement. All that is being spearheaded by her traitorous administrator, Ike Iverson (changed to Ilkisar... "I like Ike" is just too tempting), who secretly undermines his Mother-Superior's authority in the church of Wee Jas.
As we have only one female PC, for contrast I made Alek Tercival a woman... Alexis, darkly handsome, strong, and proud, wth raven hair with a single white streak running down one side. She admires strength and nobility (no surprise), and greatly admires the human Fighter PC, Corwyn. Could turn romantic, but so far he's oblivious.
Fario and Fellian. Kept them pretty much as is, but I turned the rogue/fighter (I get them mixed up) of the pair into a full elf. I prefer that half-elves be kept sparse, as I don't believe every elf out there wishes to bed down with a short-lived human. It's my belief that full-blooded elves should grossly outnumber half-elves, though in pre-fab adventures, that's not usually the case.
It seemed odd to me that the only entrance into a relatively huge enclave of was once a powerful center of learning for a great many gnomes has only one entrance... and that squirreled away in some shopkeeper's basement. I made a few subtle map changes that let the party deduce that there were once a few more entrances, larger and more trafficked, but they had been magically sealed by the gnomes when they fled J'zadirune. Just a touch more realistic.
Made one of the pit-traps, the one outside the hidden armory, a tilt-a-pit trap, described in the Web Enhancement.
Added some few human-sized weapons and armor to the treasures found in J'zadirune, as nearly all the stuff written in the module would have been Small, fitted to the gnomes who once lived there. For the bulk of exploring J'zadirune, the party had no small characters.
Introduced a new ally, kept in stasis in the pantry of J'zadirune (#J53). Read an article in Dragon introducing a sentient race of golems called Golmoids. I liked the art, adn the history had them as former servitors of the gnomes, so I introduced one. The pantry was created so that anything kept in it would gradually slip into a stasis until the door was re-opened. So, when the party opened the pantry, they revived the golmoid fighter, who quickly formed a protective friendship with the party's gnome bard. Later, when we learned about Eberron, we switched him to a warforged race, as that seemed to be a better developed race. The Greyhawk twist is that certain gnome enclaves of high magic used artificers to create these living constructs as protectors and allies. Onyx, the warforged, is one of these, left behind by mistake when the gnomes fled J'zadirune. When the gnome got to high-enough level, he took the Leadership feat and adopted Onyx as his cohort.
I kept Xukasus as an ogre jailer and major-domo... with a real Otyugh as a pet watchdog of sorts. The party was able to quickly dispatch most large beasties with little hassle, and this combo made an interesting tag-team for the party to face.
Fario and Fellian trailed the party to the Malachite Fortress, and were able to escort rescued prisoners out of the dungeon so that the party could stay together without having to babysit civilians.
Added "Gluttony" from Dungeon #98 as a side-adventure between Life's Bazaar and Flood Season. Some of the party's newcomers needed more XP to reach at least 3rd level before we started the next leg of the adventure path, and the PC ranger needed a chance to use some of his outdoor skills to rekindle his interest as a unique character who was more than a back-up fighter and healer. Made Knirval Skullstone (evil dwarf cleric) an agent of the Cagewrights, planting some seeds for future use.
Added a Wizard acquaintance and another Fighter to the Stormblades, as the party badly outnumbered them, 2-to-1.
Changed Shensen's name to Shienisae... my mother has a Lhaso Apso named Shen-Shen, and that's just too close. Also, dropped her bard level and added another level of Druid... now she's more focused and can hold her own in combat if needed. Basically, she's a full-fledged Druid of Fharlanghn with a monastic background who likes to use her bare hands in combat when possible. Doesn't travel with the party since they returned to Cauldron, but may take more active role in future.
Added some spice and variety to the thugs and Alleybashers... mixed up the races a bit, made variants who favor missile weapons, or use different feats... half-orc thugs have 18 Str and power attack, Gnome or halfing Alleybashers have 18 Dex and small size, etc. Also, gave different weapons and some armor variations all around... how likely is it that they all wear the same armor and use the same weapon type? Little more paperwork for me, but the players appreciate it, so it's worth it.
So far, that's it... they're about half-way into the Kopru ruins, just captured Triel and haven't run into Skaven or Tarkilar yet. The party just got slammed by the poison-spikes room-trap, and all but the warforged and one well-armored fighter got damaged and poisoned (the warforged was damaged too, but is immune to poison). The party only has four of the Wands so far, and is down an average of 4 Str pts. apiece. They don't really have time to go back to town and rest up, since the rains are pouring down by now, so it'll be interesting to see how they get around this. Plus, they accidentally broke the gondola/lift on the way across (too much weight) so getting back the surface is not going to be easy for them, or quick. So far, haven't needed to change anything else in this one... it's nasty enough as written!
Okay, let's see, this might take some serious recollection prowess...
<snip>
Embryl Aloustiani is made into a spooky, mysterious, and darkly powerful ally - relatively benevolent, although not overly helpful. She is not a member of the Cagewrights, and does not know of her temple's involvement. All that is being spearheaded by her traitorous administrator, Ike Iverson (changed to Ilkisar... "I like Ike" is just too tempting), who secretly undermines his Mother-Superior's authority in the church of Wee Jas.
I hope you know what you're doing. The final chapter(s) of the adventure path kind of hinge on Embryl's involvement with the cagewrights.
other that that, good changes! I like the warforged servant idea. Pretty cool
The main change I made was switching the temples of Pelor and St Cuthbert around, so the cleric of Pelor in my group could get more directly involved in the story. He was a half-orc, and the player had written some background which had him being found as a child by an older cleric of Pelor and being raised in an orphanage, and it was easy to tie all this in to Cauldron. It also offered some good role-playing opportunities when the group encountered Tongueater, and the half-orc spotted his "father's" severed head on the mantlepiece! The introductory scene with Ruphus wasn't needed, for obvious reasons.
My players found the continual dungeon-delving of the first two parts rather repetitive, so I'm going to skip Zenith Trajectory and use the Standing Stone module and Tammeraut's Fate (from Dungeon) as a change of pace. If I was running the AP again, I'd probably omit Flood Season instead.
In running the Adventure Path, my party had begun a first level adventure prior to the publishing of "Life's Bazaar." We had been playing with "The Sunless Citadel." I just threw Life's Bazaar at them afterwards, and skipped Flood Season altogether, though I did make sure that I added Shensen Tesseril of the Striders to the campaign first.
Of all the adventures in the entire path, Flood Season was the only one I was disappointed with.
I run a PBEM campaign (hence the name) and so it will take about two years to get through the Adventure Path, even if I trim a bunch out. My campaign world is a home-grown one based on an island called Revinia, which has some FR and Greyhawk bits mixed in with stuff I made up. Since my game is in its 6th year running, the PCs were already 5th level and had a history together, so I couldn't really start the adventure in Cauldron at all. There are no volcanoes on Revinia (why didn't I think of that?) and I didn't want to go plane-hopping or create an entire new culture to drag the players into, so I've done some massive revising of the game to squeeze it into my campaign.
The Shackleborn have become Horrorborne, people who have experienced such visions of terror or learned such awful secrets that they have lapsed into a type of insanity. They are not born with the mark on their foreheads; it grows there naturally (though still invisibly). I've put a heavy Lovecraftian spin on things, with the bad guys now interested in waking The Sleeping God (Cthulu?) instead of the Adimarchus thing. The beauty of this approach is that it allowed me to make one of my more interesting PCs Horrorborne, and of course he doesn't know it. An evil cultist of The Sleeping God recognized him for what he was at The Lucky Monkey Inn, so he will now be chased by Last Laugh Guildsman for a while before he figures out why. (He learned "things that men should not know" in some arcane research, and he'd gone a bit insane as a result.)
I won't be using the Soul Cages in the tree. Sleeping God cultists drain the "Essence of Insanity" from the brains of the Horrorborne into soapstone chalices instead, leaving the victim catatonic. I'm not sure what sort of evil contraption they're going to use to try to wake the Sleeping God, but I have time to figure it out. Suggestions?
That's the great thing about the Adventure Path. I'll be using Jzadirune, but I've put the entrance in the back of a basement cell under Town Hall. The PCs will delve into bal-haumatugn (sp?) but the Kua-toans will have a huge statue of the Sleeping God instead of Blibdoolpoolp (sp??). Zenith works very well as Horrorborne, by the way. I've dropped the spell-weavers of Vaprak's Voice, to be replaced by Great Old Ones in a buried cyclopean fortess of ancient basalt. Throw in a reoccuring Night Hag that the PCs keep wrangling with and presto, instant drama. As long as you keep the big picture in mind, and you can adjust the difficulty levels and when the PCs learn what, you can do the individual parts from any location, and in any order you like. When I'm done, the campaign will be nothing like the true Adventure Path as written, but I'll have gotten some truly great ideas and saved a lot of time by using the maps and NPCs.
I might also make Alek Tercival a woman. Not a bad idea.
I haven't really change a lot yet (my party just got to the Malachite Fortress last session) but I did try to make the baddies in Jzadirune more dynamic. I don't really like dungeons where the creatures just sit and wait for the PC's. And since my PC's went up and down a lot, I wanted them to move around more.
I really tried to make the PC's feel like they were being stalked and watched at all times. I also rarely had the skulks and creepers fight with the PC's one-on-one. I also tried to make use of their sneak attacks as well.
The PC's actually captured the dark stalker leader and brought him back to the temple. Jenya cured him of rthe Vanishing in exchange for some info.
They also had a very memorable encounter with the mimic that guarded Starbrow. They ultimately got the familiar but had to part with a fair amount of gold to do so (the mimic ended up grabbing the rogue and taking it). I never anticipated how mad that would make the players!! They wanted revenge on that thing for weeks.
They ended up going back to kill the mimic but I moved it (again, the dynamic dungeon). Since they wanted it so bad, I decided to put it back in. I also thought it was kind of lame that it only spoke Undercommon and there was no way any of the PC's could communicate with it. Since they had already killed everything in Jzadirune, I figured the mimic would have to go look for another source of food. Some time later when the PC's returned to Jzadirune, they heard some footsteps in the large chambed to the south. I had the mimic run away and enter the costume room and become a chest again. I was going to have the mimic speak in Common this time (it didn't want to reveal it could speak the first time) and ask for food in exchange for their gold back. Well, it never got to that. They pelted it with tanglefoot bags and the dwarven ftr/bbn promptly critted it while raging. Well, no more mimic. They missed out on some info but it sure was fun. :>)
My party had an interesting encounter with the upstairs Mimic too... our group had a dwarf Barbarian who had a total disdain for speaking the Common tongue. He understood it just fine, but wouldn't speak it, sticking strictly to Dwarven and Undercommon. This came in handy, annoying though it had been up to that point, as it gave that character something to do besides fight when they ran into the mimic. Bruno got to talk to something for a change, and his stock in the party went up.
The party ended up bargaining with the mimic, which they called Box (since at their first encounter it was morphed into a box). After a few Diplomacy checks, Box confides in the party that he hasn't had anything to eat but rats in months, so the party winds up bribing him with food. After they kill the hobgoblins in the elevator shaft (room J63), they offer the corpses up to Box as more bribery for information on what he knows about what lies further on (the Malachite Fortress). Pleased at receiving 400 lbs. of fresh meat, Box is only too happy to comply, and the party got a fair amount of info from him, though some of it was misleading. Much later, the party ran into Box in the Malachite Fortress... he'd reasoned that they would be making other fresh kills, and followed them to gorge himself. At one point, the party asked him to help protect some of the prisoners while they explored further on... Box agreed, but his appetite got the better of him; luckily, the party returned just in time to see Box trying to batter his way into a room which the frantic Maple and Coryston had hastily barricaded themselves into. Even then, the party didn't kill the ever-hungry mimic, but convinced him to try better hunting on the other side of the bridge into the Underdark. That was one fun monster.
My party made a deal with the mimic. In exchange for a regular diet of bad guys and a little treasure, the mimic is now the doorway that leads to Jzadirune in Ghelve's Locks. It also gets to eat anyone who tries to pass through into Jzadirune without speaking the password.
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I have also changed Alex Tercival to a female paladin (Alexis) to be able to have her as a love interest... (that was a stroke of genius, thanks).
My party encountered the Lucky Monkey and its denizens (especially Shensen) on its way to Cauldron. I have used the first issued location of Cauldron in Greyhawk (not the one given on the Greyhawk map), placed Sasserine 200 miles south as stated in the adventures and introduced a little village on the coast (where Sasserine is located on the Greyhawk map) called Lundby, which sees most of the trade caravans from and to Cauldron. On their way from Lundby to Cauldron they also encountered the caravan with Sarcem Delasharn on his way to retrieve the wands for the second chapter of the Adventure Path, accompanied by Alexis Tercival (to explain her absence from Cauldron during the first chapter). I also used the caravan to explain, why the usage of the Star of Justice is delayed by a day or two to give the group some time to begin their own investigation in Cauldron (to familiarize better with the town and its denizens) und why there the resources of the temple are nearly depleted.
Sarcem Delasharn used the Star to get a reading about his journey and he received a dire warning for his own life and the order to go on as planned, otherwise Cauldron will cease to exist. So he asked Alex(is) to accompany him at least to Lundby and also took many of the potions and scrolls with him. Since the Star is usable only once per week I had a good exccuse to send the adventurers out on their own and give them the clues later...
Since my group took quite a time to find Starbrow, I decided to use another idea posted here on these boards. The skulks decided to cut their losses and return to the Underdark. The group came upon the last four skulks moving out from the gnome enclave and a big fight ensued.
I also have Jenya as a quite understanding person with a good understading of the workings of the world, while Rufus is burning with religious fervor. Fario and Fellian are accompanying the group, but they are keeping this info from the Cuthbert temple.
That's what I have changed. My group just found the elevator down to the Malachite Fortress, but the fight in the elevator room was one of the best fights we ever had. They came through the secret passage from the stairs to Keygan's Locks (since they were seven persons in the group I doubled the number of hobgoblins in the room, as stated in "scaling the adventure"). The party rogue and a fighter were stading on the pit trap while opening the door to the elevator room and promptly fell into the deepened pit. The four hobgoblins started throwing their javelins at the party members behind the pit while they had trouble to get the two characters out of the pit. The second fighter in our group made the jump over the pit between the hobos and started to deal real damage going into rage and using his two-bladed sword to best advantage. As the hobgoblins threw their last javelins, one threw the switch and the elevator started to descend....during the descent the fighter took out the remaining hobgoblins and a thrown rope noose stopped the elevator 30 feet below its start. A good time was had by all :-)