Hi all. Great forum here. Lots of good info and it's compelled me to run the AP for a new group.
Anyway, I have read through most of Life's Bazaar and browsed through some of the other adventures (I don't have them all yet). I think I'm pretty much ok for running Life's Bazaar but I was just wondering about fleshing out Cauldron a little more.
What inns or places are good for the player's to use as a base of operations? Are any of the places described in any of the other modules (like the Drunken Morkoth Inn for example)? What about places to sell/buy magic items or temples of other deities?
Also, did you have to run any other side-quests during the AP or is enough provided to take the characters all the way to the end as-is?
Thanks!
Hey Glassjaw,
I ran the adventure as is.We finished in 3 sessions, but they still have to go back and finish exploring the two dungeons for treasure. A couple of things to be prepared for: my PC's captured one of the three thugs attacking Ruphus, so they questioned him, and after releasing him to the town guard they wanted to know where he lived, how he was contacted by the Last Laugh, who else was involved, etc. Later at the orphanage one of my players tried speak with animals on a local dog to try and see if it could follow the children's sent. After Terrem is rescued by the Beholder, they assume the kid is part of a prophecy to destroy the world, so they started asking question about who were his parents, how long did they live in Cauldron, when was the kid born, and stuff like that. So my advice is be ready for anything. I spent a week going through all my AP mags, and looking for NPC's who show up later, so that I can have them around now for the PC's to interact with. For instance, I told the PC's that the kid's parents bodies were buried by the Temple of Wee Jas, so they met Ike Iverson for the first time. If you search this message board, someone else found a Sgt Krewlis in a later adventure, and so had him meet the PC's earlier as well.
Good Luck.
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My suggestion after running half of the adventure path modules so far is to delve into the later ones while referring back to the first one. Even if you don't have them all, it's still good refernce.
Also, take note of how the characters play the first adventure. This will help you a lot if you reference that point when dealing with later adventures.
My players ended up being the "barge through the door" types and so I had to adjust some of the later adventures for this, because if I didn't, the players would have just been outright killed. And while this is their fault, as I DM, I do try to not kill my players, it just doesn't add to overall fun of the whole campaign.
Also, I would suggest that when you see the Campaign Seeds in the adventures, you flesh those out a little. That way you have more background to the whole path.
Also, download the web enhancements. Skie's Magical Arms and Armor shop is great for helping your characters get stuff they would normally have to go to another city for.
Also, this whole adventure path is geared towards demons/devils/angels type stuff. If you find you have a cleric that is wanting to be UNDEAD DESTROYER, you may want to go through and adjust things so that the enemies are replaced with more undead than outer planar beings.
Or one thing that I considered was allowing the cleric to turn outsiders INSTEAD of undead. While this generally doesn't happen with rules and stuff, my cleric became a huge anti devil/demon type and the turn undead aspect became almost useless for her. It's just a thought to keep in mind.
Or you could allow for both, but the turn outsider would be at the Paladin's rate for turn undead. When your cleric reaches fourth level, allow for turn outsider at 3 levels lower than her clerical level.
Anyway, those are just some of my thoughts.
Enjoy the adventure path!
I agree, as much as the undead are used a lot, the outsiders are way over used as primary villians, make new types of undead to surprise the players, I feel that udead are far more customisable than outsiders and even when the Party thinks they have them, the undead pull something out of nowhere. The undead are much more fun to fight than outsiders.
With respect to side quests:
The AP will provide enough XP for a party that suffers no incredible mishaps, but I plan for the worst (I guess I just have to account for headstrong players). I've got some adventures from other issues of Dungeon tucked away with integration notes in case my characters fall behind in XP or treasure. Two great candidates are "The Devil Box" from 109, as part of the Flood Festival, and "Racing the Snake," from 105 (replace Trend with Maavu- it makes a good opportunity to introduce this NPC early- and Vasilis with a sinister NPC of your choice, like Vhalantru or Taskerhill). Both provide a break in the generally oppressive mood of this adventure path, as well. Warduke, from 105, can make a handy standalone cut-and-paste encounter late in the campaign, as well.
