Bloodstone series and "How the Mighty Have Fallen" huh. I'll have to check those out. Thanks guys.
Okay, so I've checked them out (briefly). I noticed the Tarrasque is used in Forgotten Realms, but wasn't the creature originally a feature of Greyhawk? I could swear I read somewhere, pre-3.5 and maybe even pre-2nd Ed., that the accursed thing sleeps somewhere in the Pomarj. Was it in 2nd Ed. Greyhawk boxed set? Or From the Ashes? Or was it the AD&D Greyhawk stuff? I can't remember. Or maybe I'm mistaken.
Well, the Tarrasque was introduced in one of the 1st Ed. Monster Manuals. You could argue that at that time, Greyhawk was the only official campaign setting, thereby making any monster from these books "official" Greyhawk.
I don´t recall any mentioning of the Tarrasque with the pomarj, but then, I don´t claim to have everything GH memorized. With the slumbering thing beneath the pomarj, this could well refer to the Earth Dragon, of "Slavers" fame. And an old Dragon article mentions a demigod (Krovis, I think, is his name) also slumbering beneath the Pomarj. (Issue 167, "See the Pomarj - and die!", by Joseph Bloch.)
I would love an AP taking this area (Pomarj/Wild Coast/Celene/Ulek) as a background, however. (Yeah, I´m a GH fan, if you would not know by now... :-))
Stefan
I would love an AP taking this area (Pomarj/Wild Coast/Celene/Ulek) as a background, however. (Yeah, I´m a GH fan, if you would not know by now... :-))
Stefan
Absolutely, yes!!! That's just about my favorite part of GH.
I'll throw in my vote for a large scale war, something with some optional tie in's to Heroes of Battle perhaps. Race vs. Race doesn't need to be in there, but perhaps just one kingdom versus another. Kinda like Kingdom of Heaven, or Braveheart, but throw in a few monsters (not a lot though please).
Some of my fondest movie memories are of sieges and huge units of soldiers clashing on the field of battle.
I'm salivating for the upcoming movies Pathfinder and The 300 as well, they look like winners. An AP along these lines would most likely be a winner as well.
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So does that mean you can't say you don't like the Kevin Federline CD if you haven't heard it? Do I have to listen to the whole CD or just one song before forming an opinion? Can I read a review and then form an opinion?
(ah, the beautiful irony of posting about the proper basis for an opinion. I hope Sexi Golemn doesn't see this post...)
You can say whatever you'd like.
There is a difference between an informed opinion and an uninformed opinion. Likewise there is a difference between an informed opinion based on direct experience and one based on second hand reports.A three year old is of the opinion that he absolutely, positively, does not like whatever you have prepared for dinner, despite never having tasted it before.
John Doe says Richard Roe is a bum, but doesn't mention he hates anyone shorter than 6', and it is his opinion that everyone named Richard is always shorter than 5'10".
So yes, you can form an opinion whenever you'd like. That doesn't make it of equal value to every other opinion, or of particularly worth in and of itself.
Despite the opinion of many people on the internet.
Otherwise, it is my opinion that I am totally right, and you now have to accord that opinion absolute and total respect.
Hey, thanks guys for the info. I'm also a GH fan and would love to see an epic war take place in the Pomarj region. But maybe one that somehow incorporates the Tarrasque? The war is going badly for the good guys, but one of the leaders has discovered the location of the beast and a way to possibly control it. Unleashing the creature would dramatically tip the scales of war, and the heroes are sent on the quest. This could be whole AP right there -- setting the war and introducing the heroes to the current events of GH; the war goes badly for the good guys; the good guys have a plan, the Gods tell them there is a way to control and unleash the Tarrasque, but first they must find the secret of controlling the beast; learning the secret; venturing to the Tarrasque's lair; grand finale unleashing the Tarrasque, conquering the forces of darkness, and winning the war! Actually, kind of sounds like a Clash of the Titans theme, eh? This could even come on the heels of STAP, in which the Savage Tide has failed, but GH is still left shaken and torn in the aftermath, resulting in impending war...
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The beauty of 3rd edition allows one to add templates such as feral or legendary to a Tarrasque. The 'standard' Tarrasque from the Monstrous Manual is too weak for a group of 20th-level PC's. The final battle, like a good old-fashioned Godzilla movie, could be set in a city. Greyhawk City might not be the best choice, since it has too many high-level NPC's. Maybe Safeton, or Niole Dra.
The beauty of 3rd edition allows one to add templates such as feral or legendary to a Tarrasque. The 'standard' Tarrasque from the Monstrous Manual is too weak for a group of 20th-level PC's. The final battle, like a good old-fashioned Godzilla movie, could be set in a city. Greyhawk City might not be the best choice, since it has too many high-level NPC's. Maybe Safeton, or Niole Dra.
Like the Kaiju Template? A Kaiju Tarasque...Ha-Ha-Ha...er...wait...this idea is mine! :)
The 'standard' Tarrasque from the Monstrous Manual is too weak for a group of 20th-level PC's.
Is it? It is given CR 20 in the book. Ok, we all know that CRs are not exactly rocket science, but still I wonder. Did you use it ?
At least, someone has to cough out either a wish or a miracle to keep it dead, never mind getting it there at 858 hp... And even if there are enough high-level characters, they just might not have that spell handy...Stefan
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Actually, I never had a chance to send a Tarrasque against my players. I'm waiting for the miniature to come out. When it does...let's just say it'll make for a memorable random encounter, to say the least. I just hope they'll be higher than level 9 so they can run away by teleporting.
If the CR's of the last few villains in Age of Worms are looked at in comparison, I suspect a CR 20 isn't enough for the final villain in an adventure path.
If the CR's of the last few villains in Age of Worms are looked at in comparison, I suspect a CR 20 isn't enough for the final villain in an adventure path.
Yeah, you are probably right there. Templating the beast in one or more ways would be a nice idea to beef it up then. At least, that would be way better than just adding a few hit dice - it does not make much difference if it attacks at +56 or +59...
Stefan
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If the CR's of the last few villains in Age of Worms are looked at in comparison, I suspect a CR 20 isn't enough for the final villain in an adventure path.Yeah, you are probably right there. Templating the beast in one or more ways would be a nice idea to beef it up then. At least, that would be way better than just adding a few hit dice - it does not make much difference if it attacks at +56 or +59...
Stefan
Well speaking on behalf of the Sqeegee Clan all I can say is Bring it Hagen old buddy boy!....Just remember you may think its funny that we got dominated by aboleths and then crushed into dust by the mighty Tarasque but what goes around comes around......
Creative Director
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In order to be a proper climactic encounter, a creature needs to be tougher than the party. A creature of a CR equal to the average party level is not a challenging encounter. Four to five of them in a row without a chance to rest and regroup is a challenge.
A campaign aimed at having the tarrasque be the end boss would either have to stop at 15th or 16th level, or you'd have to advance that tarrasque a bit. Which, fortunately, is easy to do. Give that bad boy another 10 to 20 Hit Dice and POW!
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Well speaking on behalf of the Sqeegee Clan all I can say is Bring it Hagen old buddy boy!....Just remember you may think its funny that we got dominated by aboleths and then crushed into dust by the mighty Tarasque but what goes around comes around......
Hehehe. I should really thank Mr. Pett for that particular Styes encounter. Hosing your players without actually damaging them sure is fun. Since the tarrasque fig isn't out yet, I could always use that colossal red dragon I have lying around...
Back to AP4. I'm assuming James and Eric already have an idea in mind as far as major plotline is concerned. Considering the people involved, they probably have plots for half a dozen adventure paths. A few things I would like to see in AP4:
1) More recurring villains. Having read Age of Worms, it's one change I would like to make.
2) I like the idea of having a main monster type in each adventure path such as evil outsiders in Shackled City and undead in Age of Worms. Makes playing a ranger with a bane weapon much more fun to play.
3) I love Greyhawk. But I understand that many others don't. I appreciate how Paizo has managed to throw in some 1st edition elements and at the same time allowing DM's to set the AP's in the Forgotten Realms and even Eberron. Even though I would love an adventure path dealing with Iuz and the second Greyhawk Wars, I doubt that will happen since there is such a thing as too much Greyhawk.
4) More use of the backdrops in the adventures. Having read the backdrops on Diamond Lake, the Free City, and Alhaster, I found that most of the cool stuff in them made no appearances in the adventures themselves.
5) I really liked the Savage Tide Player's Guide. I still think it isn't too late to come out with one for Age of Worms though.
6) Tarrasque.
7) Howabout more direct links with previous AP's? Adventures involving spell weavers, the Queen of Chaos, Sulm, Surabar Spellmason, or the Order of the Storm could tie all the adventure paths together. Imagine: In a future adventure path the PC's find out that Surabar Spellmason was Kyuss' brother and together they prevented the spell-weavers in their plans to conquer the known planes...Okay, I know I've gotten a few of my dates wrong but I think I've made my point. Eventually this could lead to an adventure path where the villains were involved since the very beginning, much like Eclavdra's behind-the-scenes involvement in multiple adventures.
8) Since I'm currently playing in Shackled City and having read through all of Age of Worms, I've noticed that the adventure paths are far from easy. In fact, they can be downright lethal. I'm assuming this was done so that the PC's could get enough XP to gain approximately 2 levels per adventure without having 30+ encounters. Quite understandable, I do prefer adventures with a few hard encounters over adventures with lots of easy ones. Still, perhaps it would be best to tone things down a notch and give out more ad-hoc XP or simply have more than 12 adventures.
For me I would prefer to have an adventure path that took more game time to complete. It would be nice to have a character who reaches 20th level after 10 years of hard adventuring rather than 10 months. Also it makes the magic item creation feats more valuable. I always think it's a bit odd when the characters meet the 'grizzled veteran of 10 years in the army' who is a 4th level fighter yet the characters get to 4th level in about a week and a half.I realise that in 3/3.5 edition this is a bit difficult but I am sure it can be done.
I support the idea of a War as a background but I dont want characters to be mainly fighting varieties of humanoids with character levels- especially spellcasters. Spellcasters are underpowered for their CR because most combats will be over in 5-7 rounds so they dont get the ability to roll out all their abilities. Give me a monster with an ability useable 3/day and its got enough flexibility for the combat.
An alternative is an exploration or borderland type AP, I enjoy going into new realms, underground, underwater, into the cloud realm, extra planar whatever. There was an old runequest scenario called borderlands about a group of adventurers assisting a noble explore a land grant in an unfamiliar land. I also enjoyed the Night Below campaign (an adveture path rather than a campaign due to its essentially linear nature), encountering weird cultures while solving a strange conspiracy of alien creatures.
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Creative Director
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1) More recurring villains.
These are hard to do, especially since it's tough to ensure that a villian gets away from fight #1 to appear in fight #2. We're trying quite a few of these with various tactics in Savage Tide, and what we learn from there we'll certainly apply to AP4 and beyond.
2) I like the idea of having a main monster type...
Using similar monsters in an adventure also goes a long way toward giving an adventure a theme too, but we try not to go too far. An adventure where all you fight are gnolls is kinda dull.
3) I love Greyhawk.
The reason we set the APs in Greyhawk is simple; Greyhawk's the closest game world to the core D&D rules. If it's in the core books, it's in Greyhawk in the same way. It's a ground zero, a shared commonality, even among gamers who don't like or even hate Greyhawk, since we assume that all of our readers base their games off of the three core books.
4) More use of the backdrops in the adventures.
Actually, the backdrops are meant to support the adventure's expansion, which is why the adventures don't generally use much info from the backdrops. We present an adventure in a place like Farshore or Diamond Lake or Sasserine, but that can't begin to cover ALL of the possibilities for what the PCs will do. The backdrops are there to help the DM out with figuring out what happens when the PCs go beyond the scope of the adventure.
5) I really liked the Savage Tide Player's Guide. I still think it isn't too late to come out with one for Age of Worms though.
At this point, if we go back to do anything more with Age of Worms, it's gonna be for a hardcover compilation. And since WotC hasn't given us the go-ahead to start that yet... there's probably not going to be much more with Age of Worms from Paizo anytime soon.
6) Tarrasque.
He's in my top ten monsters, that's for sure.
7) Howabout more direct links with previous AP's?
We've already got a lot of links as it is. Any more, and the new adventure paths start to turn into true sequels, which isn't what we're trying to accomplish.
well, so far SCAP was fairly urban, AOW had a bit of overland and STAP covered water. so what about an underground AP next? it's generic and definitely old school. Baur dropped some true ghoul threads in the AOW already and kingdom of the ghouls had some interesting war aspects.
city of the spider queen prob covered similar ground, but how about something without drow for a change and more aberrations. i like the idea of a mindflayer threat from below. can't get more terrestrial than the underdark.
A well done Underdark (Deepearth, whatever you call it) AP would be well received by me. If anyone remembers the 3-D map with area descriptions in the back of the old 1e AD&D "Dungeoneer's Survival Guide"---those few pages really turned the crank on my imagination.
Combine Christopher West's awesome maps with some of Kyle Hunter's gritty artwork, with an overall 3-D map of the region and I would be most pleased.
I know that drow have been overused and some people are tired of them, so they don't need to be the main focus of the adventure, as mentioned by voodoo chili....but I love cool 3-D maps of caverns and stuff and would love to see something like that.
So, I could go for what voodoo chili mentioned, although there'll be many complaints about "it's just another massive dungeon crawl." Dungeon crawls with awesome maps, great encounters and a well thought out common scheme don't bother me one bit.
okay, the orc/elf thing is not going to work. too boring, even if you try to gussy it up and make it so. after three or 4 adventures of the same thing the players would be bored. ask anyone who went through the world's largest dungeon if they enjoy fighting darkmantles...:)
the tarrasque is a good challenge for 15-17th level characters. i ran it against a party of 5 20th levels just for fun once and they ended it in 4 rounds. "Simple when you know how." said one player. besides, there's only one and it's been used to death by every DM who thinks it's cool. in 1st ed it rocked because there weren't so many options for PCs. it was a tougher challenge back then. now you have PCs able to do triple digit damage in one hit if they optimize correctly. This is why you see creatures like dragotha and Kyuss as main bad guy villains.
the problem with an adventure path is that it's all been done before. undead invasion? check. humanoid invasion? check. demonic invasion of the known realms? check. evil lich necromancer? check.
i really would like to see an AP that doesn't involve the destruction of the world, or the invasion by some demonic force bent on enslaving the world. how about just a guy who sends PCs out to get 12 items of power so he can become more powerful. an artifact hunter that gets several items together just to make something to make himself more powerful. no threat to the universe, no undead plague, nothing that threatens the whole of humanity that the PCs are the only ones that can stop it. small simple dungeon crawls with rival adventuring bands as the enemies, individual evil bad guys in every adventure that don't tie into one another, and no time limit. between adventures, the main villain which in this case is the patron of the PCs, figures out where the next artifact is. between adventures for the main guy, you could have different side quests for the PCs to do that don't involve the main quest.
and make the main patron lawful good. that way the PCs would work with him and trust him. yet over the course of the path he gets seduced by the power of the artifacts in subtle ways.
that way you could have dungeons like "Crypt of the Deathlord" and "vault of the Slavemaster" and "Korgaxigon's lair".
because you never see an adventure named "The happy valley of the gleemasters."
I would like to see and adventure path that would be played with evil characters. It would be cool to try a campaign like that.
i really would like to see an AP that doesn't involve the destruction of the world, or the invasion by some demonic force bent on enslaving the world.
The problwm with high levels is that it gets (IMHO) ever more difficult to challenge the PCs adequately. If the supposedly unstoppable Tarrasque is just sword fodder for 20th level PCs, how can you challenge them without rolling out the big guns ?
Stefan
obviously you have to create a bad guy 4-6 levels higher than the PCs for it to be a memorable fight in the end. one guy against 4 or 5 pcs is a cake walk for a high level party. one of the gripes i have about high level 3.5 characters is the over use of "optimization gone wrong." with all of the splat books and race guides, creature books, etc. out there you have the ability to really fine tune and tweak the numbers on a character to stratospheric heights. now, this is all a question of play style so don't get me wrong. everyone plays the game differently and a more old school style DM hates all of the options because most of them are unnecessary and/or redundant.
not trying to divert the thread here or anything. back on topic.
my first argument with the main bad guys of an adventure path is that most of them involve a certain amount of "Core building style". what i mean by this is that they are built using mostly "core rules" because that is the default by which all players and DMs are assumed to play. take the Githyanki lich queen for example: here was a memorable bad guy, who at the beginning of 3.5 was built with a "core only" type of style because the main splat books hadn't been updated yet. from various posts and threads i've read about her most parties walked in and hosed her in less than 3 rounds. Why? too many options that had not been considered in the playtesting. am i saying core only is balanced? not in the slightest. my point is that now, with all the extra bits and bobs the PCs have access to, it gets harder and harder to challenge a party that doesn't follow "core" when the BBEG of an adventure path is built using that system.
now for kyuss, i know there were different rules used for his creation, and he was a living god, but i know the designers really had to make him a generic baddie to a certain degree because even they can't think of all the abilities and powers the pc's have access to. they also had to make him more of a challenge, i believe, to account for this.
The main bad guy in my game is Fraz-Urb-Lu and they are going to have to go to hollow's heart to defeat him. he also has a mature adult half fiend red dragon living on the astral plane that is working with F-U-L. both of these creatures have 25+ CR, which is what you need for the massive power creep that happens during a campaign. even with "core only" limits on a campaign, which very few people play, you still have to make the baddies a few cr levels higher and bundle template after template just to make them a challenge.
unfortunately, there are very few epic challengers besides demon lords, necromancer lich mages, dragons, undead vampire kings, and gods, that can be your main BBEG of an adventure path. just for goofs, i'd like to see a 1st level commoner be the bad guy. just call him "dennis" and have him preaching about rebellion against the king. make the pcs choose which side they're on. ;)
6) Tarrasque.He's in my top ten monsters, that's for sure.
Somewhere out there on the internets in the last year or so, there was some brainstorming about a city which has sprung up around the tarrasque, bound and kept weakened by various means; the city uses the bound tarrasque's fast-regenerating body as the main driver of its economy. The occasional earthquake as it stirs, plus the threat of utter annihilation, are small prices to pay for that....
(Googling ... ah, yes, that.)
To tie a couple of threads together, if there was a war against this city-state, maybe a high-level party could be the strike force sent to liberate the tarrasque and sow utter chaos in the enemy's heart.
How about evil clones of the PCs (a la the duplicates created by the Heartstone from XL-1, for example)?
If each character is fighting an equal level challenge- or even if they switch it up and fight different opponents- that might be a good challenge possibly.
Maybe even go the "rival adventurer" route and have recurring opposition become even more deadly competition, resulting in one final confrontation?
How about evil clones of the PCs (a la the duplicates created by the Heartstone from XL-1, for example)?
If each character is fighting an equal level challenge- or even if they switch it up and fight different opponents- that might be a good challenge possibly.
Maybe even go the "rival adventurer" route and have recurring opposition become even more deadly competition, resulting in one final confrontation?
I don't know about a path like this...but there is an adventure coming out in the none too distant future that may satisfy this itch...
I don't know about a path like this...
Oh- I didn't mean to suggest an entire path, but just suggested that a confrontation like that might work to challenge the PCs as the climax or something (in response to another Stebihil's question about how to do so).
but there is an adventure coming out in the none too distant future that may satisfy this itch...
Interesting. I'll keep an eye out.
6) Tarrasque.He's in my top ten monsters, that's for sure.
Hey, for the record, I was the first one who brought up the idea of using Tarrasque on this thread, so I want full credit, royalties, and rights to your first-borns!!!!
WAIT A MINUTE!!!!.... I need to rethink the whole first-born thing...
I can't speak for the SCAP, but there's a recurring theme in the other APs and on these threads I'm really starting to dislike: save the world. I really liked AoW and STAP seems cool so far, but enough already. There can still be an evil threat/source for the PCs without it turning the world upside down. I'm glad to see monsters like Kyuss and Demogorgon (and Tarrasque maybe?)getting their due but lets see something without all the apocalypse. The original drow series ( not Queen of the Spiders) did it, why not something from Paizo?
A very interesting thread.
My intial thinking on the topic of the next adventure path is don't rehash too much of what was done in the previous three and avoid anything that is too similar to recent WotC products like Red Hand of Doom or Expedition to Castle Ravenloft.
On the topic of war as a general theme for the whole AP, I think it would be much better to have something more akin to a clan feud covering a portion of the AP with the PCs forced to side with one or the other (or double dealing if they're more mercenary). The results of the clan conflict could then influence later events. But maybe the cause of the conflict is more interesting?
Mind Flayers are sweet - bring them on (with psionics). Oh, and give them laser guns and spaceships. :-)
Don't do too many urban adventures in the AP.
Definitely have some outer planes components to the AP.
One or two of the adventures need to be a pure dungeon crawl.
Agree with an earlier poster that a portion of the adventure should definitely focus on underground exploration.
A big dragon or two never hurts.
Do another player's guide - the last one was really good.
Make a lot of use of monsters that have official D&D miniatures available or coming soon - and/or have Paizo Game Mastery miniatures that coincide with key NPCs/monsters.
L
Howabout a 28th-level commoner as a villain? After spending years defending his farm from orc raids, he decides enough is enough.
"..starring (Insert favorite action hero here) as the lord of the pitchfork, the master thresher, the combine of calamities.....he's taking his foes out to pasture...."
lol...
"Epic commoner" sounds like an oxymoron (or is it only moron ;-)) to me.
His main weapon is his pitchfork +5 of mighty dung-scooping...
Stefan
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I can't speak for the SCAP, but there's a recurring theme in the other APs and on these threads I'm really starting to dislike: save the world. I really liked AoW and STAP seems cool so far, but enough already. There can still be an evil threat/source for the PCs without it turning the world upside down. I'm glad to see monsters like Kyuss and Demogorgon (and Tarrasque maybe?)getting their due but lets see something without all the apocalypse. The original drow series ( not Queen of the Spiders) did it, why not something from Paizo?
I can say with authority that the next Adventure Path will not involve Saving The World. We've done more than enough of that already.
That said, it is somewhat difficult to come up with good plots usable with 20th-level characters that don't involve saving some relatively important aspect of the world, but we're working on it. :)
--Erik
Saving the part of the world that is occupied by your own ass is always important. Have the 20th level characters be the hunted...nothing like getting stalked to bring out the pucker factor.
At this point, if we go back to do anything more with Age of Worms, it's gonna be for a hardcover compilation. And since WotC hasn't given us the go-ahead to start that yet... there's probably not going to be much more with Age of Worms from Paizo anytime soon.
:throws furniture around the room in a mad fit of rage:
Make them understand JJ.
Please.
Make this happen.
Well I'll throw my thoughts in. I don't know if this has been covered already (way to many posts to read at my lunch break), but what about a dragon war? Metallic vs. Chromatic? Throw in a bunch of planar dragons? The psionic gem dragons too...?
Now I'm not one for a lot of dragon encounters (in fact, I complained about the "too many" in SCAP quite a bit), but you can use dragon-related monsters. Maybe use all those Tiamat spawn things from the MM4 and other new supplements. Just have the dragons be the major battles. Heck, even make the main bad guys powerful, weird versions of dragons (how many templates can a dragon have?).
I, for one, would love an Underdark Adventure. I haven't quite outgrown my love-for-drow just yet, so bring them on! Even a certain drow-ranger.... ;-)
Why having one race vs. another?
Just let two human kings take the battle to the poor folks, while they eat and drink and have their women!
I like this line of thinking especially for eberron - with the last war's peace teetering on edge this is plausible AND likely - the character don't want another last war and so they work for an out side kingdom or one of the two warring ones to halt the progression...
I agree though I am tired of the outsider threat - natives can be just as detrimental if not more to their own plan and I would love to see the next AP go that direction.
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Creative Director
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It's certainly been said before, but there's a really good reason why dragons, undead, and outsiders figure so prominently in the last few adventures for the first three adventure paths—that's the way D&D is built. In the Monster Manual, the only monsters above CR 13 who aren't one of these three types is the werewolf lord (which isn't really a new monster but a werewolf with class levels, so it's harder to reuse the statblock a lot), the marut (which is hard to work into adventures due to its unusual purpose and goals and personality), the greater stone golem (which is a big monster so it's hard to fit in most places and then we have statues animating to attack the party which is an entirely different controversy), aboleth mages (which should actually be CR 13), jarl frost giants (the werewolf situation repeated), mnd flayer sorcerers (the aboleth mage situation repeated), and the tarrasque (which you can't really use more than once).
Basically, the only really "reusable" monsters in the Monster Manual are all outsiders, undead, or dragons. We can certainly go to non MM sources, in which case the available monsters EXPLODES, but then we have to reprint a lot of enormous high-level stat blocks and that robs space from the adventure's actual adventure content. So as a result, we try to stick to the outsider/dragon/undead trio for themes for high level.
Now: All that said, as Erik mentions above, we are getting kinda sick of it at Paizo as well. We are indeed in the process of planning out AP4, and rest assured, we'll be focusing on enemies that aren't dragons, outsiders, or undead for this one. They won't be missing entirely, but they won't be the point of the campaign.
It'll just mean that some of the last adventures will be a bit longer than normal, that's all.
My vote for AP 4. Save Nodwick from his companions! That ought to give the players more than enough to do!
Now: All that said, as Erik mentions above, we are getting kinda sick of it at Paizo as well. We are indeed in the process of planning out AP4, and rest assured, we'll be focusing on enemies that aren't dragons, outsiders, or undead for this one. They won't be missing entirely, but they won't be the point of the campaign.It'll just mean that some of the last adventures will be a bit longer than normal, that's all.
hmmm.... I would want to ask if you could just publish these stats online only, but I know that this would not be possible, as there are readers who are not online. (gasp!)
The stats for the Hellfire Soldiers in Heart of Hellfire Mountain were not that space eating (less than one-third of a page), but these were only fighters. If you have spellcasters or special templates, it gets a lot more complicated - Ingrid Forgebellys stats were about half a page long, and she was "only" CR 20... But I´d rather have a few unusual encounters then a lot encounters re-using the same monsters over and over again.Stefan
The last two paths have ranged far and wide in terms of travel and have dealt with a very grandiose and/or cosmic themes. Why not have an adventure path that revolved around a place, preferably a small community. The APs have lacked depth in terms of breadth at various points and I'd like to see a AP that doesn't follow the tracks of one plot for 20 levels. What about telling a more local story.
Other posts have suggested the idea of using mortal foes as a focus. This approach would make the adventures more easily adapted to setting with a different or dissimilar cosmology.
The one common thing in the last three adneture paths has been an external threat upon the world possablly changing the "STATUS QUO". I would like to see an adventure path were the heroes challenge the status quo. Instead of fighting off a threat that could destroy the world, why not fight an oppressive tyrant to create a better world. Sticking with the war theme. WHy not a revolutionary war, where the heroes final battle is with the tyrannical overlord.
Revolution in the heart of IUZ's domain perhaps? It would take the adventure path away from the tropics and into colder regions of the world
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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The last two paths have ranged far and wide in terms of travel and have dealt with a very grandiose and/or cosmic themes. Why not have an adventure path that revolved around a place, preferably a small community.
Based on our discussions to date, my gut tells me that this is where we're headed.
--Erik
The last two paths have ranged far and wide in terms of travel and have dealt with a very grandiose and/or cosmic themes. Why not have an adventure path that revolved around a place, preferably a small community.Based on our discussions to date, my gut tells me that this is where we're headed.
--Erik
Perhaps a campaign based completely in one city? Using many things from the new "Cityscape" coming out? That could be interesting....
Although I love urban adventures and campaigns in cities like Sharn or Waterdeep, I haven' had the honor to walk the streets of Greyhawk yet, I would prefer a smaller community for this one.
I would love to hold the big book in my hands and have read all the sneak peeks, excerpts etc. on Mr. Cook's website, but the price is simply too high. And for a fanboy like me it isn't enough to just posess the one book, I had to have all the Ptolus stuff. :)
But I have to say that this is really a lovely book. For now I am totally happy with the STAP which I have to say is the best campaign I have ever had the honor to run. But also have to committ that I am already looking forward to AP 4!
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I would love to hold the big book in my hands and have read all the sneak peeks, excerpts etc. on Mr. Cook's website, but the price is simply too high. And for a fanboy like me it isn't enough to just posess the one book, I had to have all the Ptolus stuff. :)
But I have to say that this is really a lovely book. For now I am totally happy with the STAP which I have to say is the best campaign I have ever had the honor to run. But also have to committ that I am already looking forward to AP 4!
Well, don't know if I am allowed to say it here, but you can download the different chapters of the big book as pdf files over at drivethrurpg.com for a fair price!