I have been running the Adventure Path for several months now with a group of 8 players. I have moved Cauldron to Sembia in the Forgotten Realms. I really wanted to run a more euro-centric adventure so I was forced to change some of the encounters to fit. For example, in Flood Season, I changed Tongue-eater and the baboons to a Werewolf and Dire Wolves. I also replaced the dinosaurs who were eating the carrion behind the Lucky Monkey Inn with two ghouls and one ghast. In Zenith Trajectory, I changed Garrek the mummy/torturer into a creature from the Fiend Folio, that was called something like a Quth Mara? Sorry, don't have it with me, but I would recommend that anyone who has access to the FF look it up as a skinless, undead torturer who can spit and ooze acid made for an excellent character. After my characters left the prisoner's in place during the adventure, they came back to find one dead, and the other one skinned and propped up to make them think the torturer they had killed had returned. The thing I have enjoyed about the adventure path is that, even though several of the players I DM for have been playing since the mid-seventies, they are not familiar with the unusual creatures introduced in the AP. These players are still scratching their heads in wonder about what that creature was.
Dave
I'm running "Test of the Smoking Eye" independently of the adventure path.
I've found it very useful to substitute some of the less flavourful random encounters (fiendish lions, for example) with some of the much more spicy demons from Green Ronin's "Book of Fiends."
For example, I had an encounter in the ossaic forests with 2 octopus-like shoggti with 'fascinate' abilities.
Another really fun encounter was a group of small skeletal monkey-demons known as skullduggers who were leading around a (fiendish) conflagration ooze (from Monster Manual III) for sport. They would just stay out of the ooze's range but taunt it until they came across something else the ooze would attack. Then the skullduggers would turn invisible and watch the fray.
When the PCs defeated the ooze, the skullduggers came out of hiding and started blasting them with burning hands-effects. Lots of fun and it took the PCs a while to figure out what the hell was going on!
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I am gearing up to run the adventure path for my group.
I am building up on the whole Jzadirune magic disease story line, and have replaced traditional gnomes, with my own house variant based on the Techno Gnomes from a Dragon Magazine article that covered the races of Warcraft III. The idea here is because of the disease (which i have changed into a curse) the regular gnomes of the Flanaess stay away from Cauldron, and those gnomes that remained have become similar to the techno gnomes from that Dragon article.
From that same Dragon article I also wanted to use the Exiled Dwarves (with some minor changes), and since I also wanted to use the Jungle Dwarves from Unearthed Arcana, I decided to come up with a whole new background story for the dwarves in that region. In brief, the mountain dwarves got kicked out of their halls in the Hellfurnaces long ago. Some of them went off to live in the jungle, and thus became jungle dwarves, and others eventually found their way to Cauldron and became the Exiled Dwarves.
I added Jungle Elves as an available PC race. They also came from Unearthed Arcana.
As far as substitutions for the actual adventure path itself;
I mentioned above I change the magic disease of Jzadirune to a curse, which the PC's are going to have to deal with when they go to Jzadirune. (I felt this was just too good of a sub-plot to leave as published).
I am going to change out the animated mass of chains in the Malachite Fortress for something else, I just havent decided exactly what yet.
At The Lucky Monkey I am thinking I will change to wolves, and were-wolf, or dire rats and a were-rat. Just not sure yet. DDM doesnt have a were-baboon, and I like my monsters to match my minis. As far as the dinosaurs go, I was thinking about using Carrion Crawlers instead.
I havent read too indepth much past Flood Season yet so I am not sure what other subs / additions I am going to make.
DDM doesnt have a were-baboon, and I like my monsters to match my minis.
Yeah, but plenty of the orc minis look sufficiently bestial to seem like a hybrid form (Mountain Orc, for instance). And if he drinks his potion of Enlarge Person, the Dire Ape is perfect.