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For those of you lucky enough to have gotten the pdf or physical copy of this, please post your impressions here. Try and keep it spoiler lite if you could (or use spoiler tags).
I liked Gallery of Evil and his various adventures in Dungeon, so I'm curious to see how Mr. Greer's contribution to Pathfinder turned out.
I see my card was charged today. Can't wait for access to that PDF!
The Single file, and multiple file options did the opposite fo what they said though....strange, but manageable.
(single file if 17MB, multiple 20MB for anyone who wants to make sure before they downlaod!!)
Confirmed. Threw me through a loop for a minute.
The Beastiary is excellent as usual.
The Lamashtu article also seems excellent, with a couple new spells, a new domain, and a druid variant class. Also has an awesome picture of a typical lamashtu statue.
Glancing over the adventure leaves a good taste in my mouth, but detailed reading will have to wait until I finish reading the first 5 adventures. Heh.
Good work again, paizo!
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My thoughts:
Bestiary: astounding. Best one yet
Pathfinder Journal: just skimmed, looks good
Lamashtu: Not enough words to describe. The art, if a little creepy, is absolutely gorgeous.
Sin magic: Just skimmed, but it looks like some excellent and cool spells in there
Adventure: Again, just skimmed, not enough info to tell, but since each person has their own opinion, you should read it yourself before I give you my take.
Just thought I'd throw out that this is a huge dungeon-crawl adventure. 95% of the stuff I see is underground. This might be good or bad, depending on your group.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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Just thought I'd throw out that this is a huge dungeon-crawl adventure. 95% of the stuff I see is underground. This might be good or bad, depending on your group.
Agreed, but it's pretty much split into 8 small dungeons, instead of one or two huge ones. That'll make it much more palatable for my players.
One question:
Any suggestions for modifying this?
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Just thought I'd throw out that this is a huge dungeon-crawl adventure. 95% of the stuff I see is underground. This might be good or bad, depending on your group.Agreed, but it's pretty much split into 8 small dungeons, instead of one or two huge ones. That'll make it much more palatable for my players.
One question: ** spoiler omitted **
Any suggestions for modifying this?
one that is and one that isn't? (starting to NOT like save for one monthly shipment now)
WOWZA just skimmed the whole thing...they keep getting better :)
Just thought I'd throw out that this is a huge dungeon-crawl adventure. 95% of the stuff I see is underground. This might be good or bad, depending on your group.Agreed, but it's pretty much split into 8 small dungeons, instead of one or two huge ones. That'll make it much more palatable for my players.
One question: ** spoiler omitted **
Any suggestions for modifying this?
After the quickest of glances, my impression is that this adventure is awesome. At least conceptually. We'll see if the execution delivers on the promise of the concept...
I haven't read much yet, so this will seem unfairly critical, but! It was at the beginning of the adventure background, so it's come to my attention quickly!
"Phased" is a common but quite incorrect misspelling of "fazed". The sentence should read ". . . even the fall of their homeland barely fazed them." :)
I promise I'll come back to the thread with praise when I can!
Just skimmed though the PDF and am suitably impressed- some great opportunities for role playing ethical dilemmas as well as some cracking action. I'm also enjoying the designer notes- by showing what was in mind, it help me as a DM stage the scenes and place emphasis where it's most effective, particularly in an adventure that requires the players to rise to the role playing occasion.
I haven't read much yet, so this will seem unfairly critical, but! It was at the beginning of the adventure background, so it's come to my attention quickly!
"Phased" is a common but quite incorrect misspelling of "fazed". The sentence should read ". . . even the fall of their homeland barely fazed them." :)
I promise I'll come back to the thread with praise when I can!
I'll happily accept your praise and if you have negative remarks, I'll just as happily blame the editors! ;)
Praise!
Great site-based adventure. Lots of variety, very creepy descriptions, interesting complications for the PCs to have to deal with. It's somewhat simple, but in a good way - everything reinforces the themes in play, without awkwardness or confusion.
Poor Nelevetu Voan. I'll have to make sure my players get him out of his cage and help him escape . . .
My favourite part: Karzoug doesn't get to finish his boast. ;)
Give us some info on the beastiary! BEASTIARY!
Err, your wish is my command?
The ercinee, or alicanto, is a Large CR 4 bird which, to my mind, fits in really well on the more magical end of the fauna of Varisia.
The marsh giant is a Large CR 8 swampdweller with a great, unique animistic religion and an aquatic variety called brineborn.
The witchfire is a Medium CR 9 undead, the spirit of a slain hag which often attract will-o-wisps. There's a cool legend about the first witchfire.
The shemhazian demon is a Garguantuan CR 14 fiend which just look amazing. They too have an excellent origin, and several unique shemhazians are named and briefly described.
The night monarch is a Huge CR 15 butterfly-like outsider, the herald of Desna on Golarion. They have a mortal variation as well, the star monarch.
The yethazmari is a Large CR 15 fiend, the herald of Lamashtu. They look like winged, eyeless jackals with a snake for a tail. The illustration is fabulous.
I read the adventure--not in enough detail to run it yet--and my first impression is, "My campaign just ended. Well, it was fun while it lasted." I don't think I can run this. But I have severe weaknesses as a GM for high-level play; I'd only hoped things could remain playable a little longer.
I'm really, really bummed. I'm hoping my first impressions are wrong, but I'm not hopeful. I think that in our hands, this is going to be a string of disasters punctuated by ugly rules fights and player upsets. There might be a couple of playable bits--it's just possible that I can pull them out and write something else around them.
The support material is excellent, though--the writeup of Lammashtu is awesome, their best yet. It actually puts the cult in societal context, something you hardly ever see for an evil deity.
Mary
I don't think I can run this.
Can you be more specific why you cannot run it? My thoughts on D&D is that it's playable to 15th level, then things get bit more complicated. This campaign goes to 15th, so I think it's okay for me. I did run the whole Age of worms and it was a pain in the ass after 15th, but still possible to run.
I'm unclear as well-there's more bookkeeping as you go up, but among other things, i don't have extraplanar travel or teleporting, which makes things easier for longer...granted, #5 takes place in a demiplane, but I can easily make that underground, etc...
...granted, #5 takes place in a demiplane, but I can easily make that underground, etc...
(One who hasn't seen Pathfinder #5 yet) Really? Demiplane? Hmmm....
I don't think I can run this.Can you be more specific why you cannot run it? My thoughts on D&D is that it's playable to 15th level, then things get bit more complicated. This campaign goes to 15th, so I think it's okay for me. I did run the whole Age of worms and it was a pain in the ass after 15th, but still possible to run.
I ran AoW until halfway through the next-to-last module, so about 18th, and gave up. I played in SCAP until a roughly similar point and then gave up. Bad feelings and recriminations in both cases--it is hard to see a game die after you've invested a lot into it. After two bad experiences I'm pretty gun-shy.
Sins of the Saviors just seemed, in my first read-through, to have an unusually high concentration of the specific things that make high-level so hard to run fairly or in a fun way--tons of "one slip and you're screwed permanently" elements (note the "your players will hate this" sidebar on one trap; there are others like it, too). It reminded me a lot of Tomb of Horrors. My player is not a fan, and neither am I.
I started out excited, and then just got more and more depressed as I read it and tried to imagine running it. All I could imagine were complaints.
I have to read it again; this is not a fair evaluation. Room by room, stat block by stat block, trying to decide if the problems can be fixed. But my first impression was violently negative, for my group and party; it looked like a distillation of what I hate about high-level play.
Mary
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Actually, you're supposed to be about 15th at the end of 5, so the path really hits 16 or 17, maybe 18. Regardless, I like all levels of play(even epic). Course, it's easier to play Exalted for the high powered stuff.
On to the adventure! I like what I see. A lot. Glad we finally get back to the really good stuff.
The only thing I don't find as awesome is the runeforged weapons. They're great for what they're supposed to do, but I just feel like something is missing. Maybe it's just my preference for something like that to produce super weapons. Maybe it's just a side effect of my group that I run-we tend to have 'main event' roleplaying, with the rest of the stuff being story reasons to beat up monsters, etc. More smashy, with some fluff in there.
Anyone else feel this way?
Just downloaded the PDF. Well, Mr. Greer, for starters, not once in his intro to your adventure does Mr. Schneider mention Beverly Hills 90210. Dude, trust me on this one, that speaks volumes of praise! Now that you're done writing this adventure I suggest that you and the Paizo staff set Wes down and give him a "little chat." You have to deprogram that TV crap out of his head. It will only come back to haunt you in later issues of the Pathfinder series. Just wait till Wes starts talking about Tori Spelling when he should be pimping another adventure. Oh, you will rue the day! Mark my words!
Get Wes to watch the Sarah Connor Chronicles premiere, or the last season of Bubblestar Garlica when it comes on, mayhaps that will get him back on track!! Or not...
Ok, I be reading the adventure now.
I just examined the bestiary.. And Mothra lives!!!!!
Ok, now I be reading the adventure now.
I just examined the bestiary.. And Mothra lives!!!!!
Haha, it's true!
Come back, Mothra!
Where is the Web Enhancement?
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My card hasn't been charged, nor I have received the usual communication. ARGH!This is because you've selected to hold all of your subscriptions for monthly shipment. We're currently anticipating that Pathfinder 6 will arrive before the end of the month.
But Vic - where is mine. I took the send Pathfinder as quickly as possible option.... I just double checked. (If this sounds like whining, I'm afraid it is).
Still reading thru my copy (I generally have to read a module 3 or so times to feel like I get it, but wanted to toss out the following counterpoint:
As a DM who actually has ran Tomb of Horrors several times (makes good fodder for a one-shot hackfest, as it was a tournament module, if memory serves me correctly), I didn't think that the trap in E2 was that bad.
Yes, players *really* don't like losing gear, but the trap in E2 is pretty blatant. There are two warnings, one somewhat subtle and one not, before getting to E2, and the room containing the trap itself makes it quite obvious that something really bad happened and is still happening. The visual display of E2 should warn pretty much everyone to proceed with extreme caution, unless you're roleplaying a kender.
It's not nearly on the same level as the infamous Sphere of Annihilation statue trap or the seesaw lava trap in Tomb of Horrors.
That said, I did think F10 was pretty fiendish/lethal and could definately see traps like G1 taking tired or less experienced players by surprise.
I think the way to go is to modify traps that appear to lethal for one' s party from something that borders on save or die to something that more resembles save or suck (ability damage, temporary level drain, small penalties that stack with future occurances, etc.)
I also have to comment that a trapfinder (rogue, diviner or otherwise) has several opportunities to shine throughout these dungeons.
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With all the hints thrown out about deadly traps in the adventure, I'm jonese'd for this. I love high level adventures and my players, either my ftf groups or PbP groups know that as much as they dish out, it can be dished in return. I love ramped up adventures..having played up to epic levels.
Can't wait.
It's funny that players hate losing their character's stuff more than losing their character.
Maybe you've shared this on another board Mary, but how did the high-level play derail your game in AoW and SCAP? Was is PC overpower or Monster overpower?
Just skimmed the issue now, didn't read anything, just checked it out. This I have to say.
The art is top notch. Now I liked all the art so far in pathfinder, but in this issue I couldn't find a picture I didn't want to make a poster out of and hang above my bed. It's freakin' awsome!
It reminded me a lot of Tomb of Horrors. My player is not a fan, and neither am I.
I'm sorry to hear that it doesn't appeal to you. On the other hand, I'm flattered that it reminded you of ToH since that was what the editors asked me to shoot for as far as flavor and feel.
I fully agree with the Disjunction trap. It's problematic. My group lost more than half their gear. But it was also much meaner as originally written. I didn't give quite as much forewarning. James & Co. seem to have tried to make it much more obvious so that most players would treat it as the serious threat it really is. Having said that, though, the recharging pool (I assume you're referring to the Pool of Elemental Arcana) was designed much more generously in the original draft. Some of the bonuses I wrote in have been removed. They were definitely generous (weapons could have their "pluses" increased by one, wands have their caster levels increased, items with limited uses per day would have those uses doubled... stuff like that) and also cruel. Mostly the cruel stuff seems to have remained with not as much of the generous stuff. But you as the DM can easily alter it back to how I've suggested or customize it as you see fit. It's really not much work. So I don't see the problem.
The mirrors of opposition work exactly the way they are described in the DMG. When ONE individual steps between them, TWO duplicates of that person step out, one from each respective mirror since they reflect back and forth. Mirrors of Opposition work a set amount of times before they need to be reset. So, in this adventure, it can work up to the amount of times described. It is definitely tough, but nothing that players of the level for this adventure can't solve with invisibility, wall spells in front of the mirrors, or even splattering it with mud & gook with an unseen servant carrying a pail or something so that the mirrors cannot reflect anything. And let's not forget simply destroying them. Even the not so bright players know not to step in front of the mirrors again until they've taken them out of commission and destroyed the duplicates. So most groups are not going to face more than the initial two that the first person to step between them creates, but then all kinds of weird things can happen in D&D. Maybe they're walking two abreast or something and duplicates of two players attack. Dunno.
Anyway, again, I'm sorry that you don't like what you read and feel that you won't be able to continue with this AP because of it. Your concerns are valid. I hope you at least find some material, monsters, or items you like that you can still use.
Edit: How amusing... apparently the word G-O-O-K (as in grime, dirt, slop or slimy types of substance) is a naughty word that has to be censored. Weird. Hmmm. I guess because it can also be a racist term.
Spoiler:The encounter with the Scribbler is meant to be drawn out to encourage a verbal exchange and facilitate making that happen. There a lot of groups with the "If it talks I kill it" attitude that often spoil these kind of clue dropping conversations. The dim door thing and the unseen speaker in the fog builds a really creepy and cool atmosphere while allowing DMs to drop all of the clues needed to get the PCs heading in the right direction. Much of this was James Jacobs' contribution to my manuscript. I wish I would have thought of it myself! I immediately recognized what he was trying to do with verbal exchange I had written in and the spell effect completely solved the problem I saw in playtesting: PCs killing the bad guy before he has a chance to say what he has to say. I know that sounds too scripted, but unless the players are reading the adventure this is so easy to pull off as written that it should feel completely natural on the player's end. And that's something that's really hard to pull off. What I had written was almost there. What James added took it the rest of the way.
My comment..
Where is the Web Enhancement?We'll be trying to get the web enhancement for Pathfinder 5 up and online sometime next week; it's in layout, but we have to get a big stack of other things moving before that. Hopefully by next Friday, though!
I figured those downloading would be reading that before it was even available but wanted to check.
Thanks
(Save the 5k, 3.5e is as enjoyable as ever)
I'm not a fan of huge dungeon crawls, generally. But I think this is broken up well enough and with enough variety to work well for me. The artwork is really good in this one, too and I'm happy to see Eva Widdermann's work in the Lamashtu article (which was also great).
Maybe you've shared this on another board Mary, but how did the high-level play derail your game in AoW and SCAP? Was is PC overpower or Monster overpower?
The single biggest factor was buff spells, PC and NPC. The preparations for the last fight in SCAP (in 13 Cages) took the GM 2.5 hours and the player 1 hour--and in retrospect I might have saved the 3 PCs who died if I'd been willing to do another hour or two of prep and shopping. There just wasn't enough payback for this. If I didn't do the prep the PCs would all die (repeated proof of this throughout the campaign) but it wasn't any fun to do it.
The fight itself was almost all bookkeeping. Dispel Magic, check through 20-30 spells, adjust all the numbers, repeat.... My PCs finally killed their demonic father but I was so tired and numb that I couldn't bring myself to care.
Also, the durations of the buffs forced a rhythm on the games that I hated, especially as a GM. Once you had 20-30 spells up, each with its own duration, you had a ticking clock on your combat effectiveness, and you also had a huge memory load. As a result, I found my player would stop listening to room descriptions, stop reacting to scenery, stop talking to NPCs, eliminate all PC/PC conversation as well, and just focus grimly on getting the fights done before the buffs ran out. I thought Longshadow would be a cool module, but it was a complete washout--no roleplaying, just fights, because the player didn't have time or effort left to roleplay. This is, alas, how I expect Sins of the Saviors to play, if we run it.
In AoW the PCs looked overpowered; in SCAP they looked badly underpowered; in both games the fights became very unstable, with one early decision determining the outcome. Many of the PCs became essentially useless--I hadn't appreciated how strong DR and SR become at high level--and play focused around, in all three cases, two dominating PCs with the others in supporting roles. There was horrendous pressure to optimize. I succumbed to decisions like having a PC use a holy sword despite a character background that made this completely unreasonable, because the alternative was for her to be totally useless in fight after fight.
Finally, the prevalence of teleport/fly/shadow walk/wind walk/plane shift meant that the PCs lost all connection to place. In AoW it was impossible to get them to care about locations anymore after Longshadow. There was just them and Kyuss, and that was it. In SCAP my PCs took to spending every night in Hell, because that was safer than anywhere on the Prime Material. They never dealt with human allies anymore, because with scry/buff/teleport their presence was a lethal danger to anyone lower-level than themselves. Defenders of Cauldron? No; it wasn't possible. They were never *in* Cauldron, because being somewhere they could be found was a probable death sentence.
Whew. Long rant.
I knew my campaign would die, and I rather expected it to die at #5, but it's been so extremely successful so far that even knowing in advance, I'm still really bummed. I'm looking at #5 trying to decide if there is any way to save it, even though I suspect this is a bad decision that will cause me grief. (In retrospect I wish I'd quit SCAP at least 2 months earlier. I'm not playing any more, just GMing, because I haven't gotten my morale back.)
Mary
Spoiler:I'm not sure what the problem with the guards and wards spell is. Do you feel it is too much? Do you think it's unfair on the players?
This isn't a big deal; later problems were a lot worse. But it struck me as a taste of things to come. I have very bad memories of guards and wards in _City of the Spider Queen_ both times I ran it.
I totally agree with the desire to have the PCs talk rather than instantly killing this villain. Terrain hazards are a good way to do it, too. But in our hands the method actually used is so hard to adjucate fairly that it's a cure worse than the disease.
What I find is that the game is more fun if the player does not rules-lawyer, does not argue, and does not utilize the broken bits of the system (which he knows very well, better than I do). I can ask him not to, and he'll willingly comply. But if I then throw _Tomb of Horrors_ style tricks at him he'll stop complying, and the game instantly becomes a nightmare to GM. I can't blame him. Who wants all of the PCs to die because you didn't use everything you had?
But this isn't what he wants; it isn't what I want; the module's going to have to be rewritten if we play it at all (I'm not sure yet) so that it doesn't force us into a style of play we loathe.
This is not a general review. I reviewed the other four modules because I'd run them, I felt I had some understanding of what they were trying to accomplish, and I could judge them fairly. I can't judge this one. It's too far from anything we'd do by choice, and if I run it, it's going to be nearly unrecognizable. It needs way more politics and way less traps.
It's probably a nice piece of work for what it is (I'm not the one to say, for obvious reasons). The craftsmanship looks pretty sound. I'm just bummed that it's part of a series which previously wasn't like that. And a little angry, to be honest, that we just had _Against the Giants_ and now we have _Tomb of Horrors_, where I would have liked to see what Paizo is capable of doing *now*. I have no nostalgia for those days, and I really like the new material, like the slant on goblins in #1.
Mary
Huh. I enjoy running high level games, and I think I know why now. Mary, don't take offense, but I think your stress is mostly self-induced. It's not your fault, it's the RAW.
But here's my fix: stop paying attention to spell durations.
If it lasts rounds or minutes, it lasts the whole fight. At that level, the fight's only going to last 4 rounds, 6 if you're lucky, so even the short duration spells will last the whole fight. And by the time loot has been collected and healing magics performed, the durations have expired. That'll cut down on the buffing and rushing from room to room, since all that buffing would only help in one fight.
By these levels, the long duration stuff is good all day (stuff like mage armor), so don't bother tracking those durations either.
Mary, sounds like you have a really great sense of the game you run and you're paying attention to the dynamics that work and don't work for you. I also can totally see your point since what you're describing is a one-on-one style game (at least, that's what I get out of your references to your "player" now and then). The style of adventure I wrote for Pathfinder works best for a group of multiple actual players as opposed to one player running several and perhaps an NPC or two provided by the DM. There are layers of things in this adventure that are aimed at the various type of adventurers that make up your basic PC party. Lacking those elements as actual players sitting around the game table contributing their independent ideas, skills, and problem solving abilities to work as a team to overcome the various challenges, most of which are challenging at the least, makes this style of adventure very difficult to pull off.
I can only applaud your good senses and foresight into what you recognize as problems for your game and that you are already planning changes to address them to wring as much fun as you can out of this adventure. Also, I feel better knowing the problems aren't so much with my writing as much as it's an issue with the mechanics of higher level play and the bookkeeping that accompanies high level spellcasters.
I wish you luck with adapting it to your game style. And, of course, I'm always happy to lend an idea or suggestion if you need it.
Top notch artwork; absolutely gorgeous.
Creative Director
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I like the oliphaunt too, but I was just wondering: what exactly is the oliphaunt?
We first mentioned the oliphaunt back in Pathfinder #1 in the Thassilon article. Eventually, I suspect that it'll play a bigger role in a future Adventure Path, but basically, it's a giant end-of-the-world type monster, like the tarassque or Cthulhu or Godzilla.
I am very surprised to admit that I am thrilled about this adventure. I was sceptical after reading of the concept described in PF#1, I don't like mega-dungeons, but after seeing the actual piece I'm psyched. I love the variety of ideas found in each branch of the Runeforge, and I expect my players to have a ton of personalized reactions to the different forms of magic and sin. This is the first mega-dungeon that I have ever been enthusiastic enough about to want to run.
If it lasts rounds or minutes, it lasts the whole fight. At that level, the fight's only going to last 4 rounds, 6 if you're lucky, so even the short duration spells will last the whole fight. And by the time loot has been collected and healing magics performed, the durations have expired. That'll cut down on the buffing and rushing from room to room, since all that buffing would only help in one fight.
So essentially, all the round-per-level and minute-per-level durations are replaced with "one encounter" durations?
It's a possible fix. For the harder scenarios, though, the likely response of a player who really wants the PCs to succeed will be to do one encounter and withdraw. I have sat in on several groups that play this way: one encounter per day, unless it is a total pushover. I find this catastrophic for my sense of the gameworld, personally: it just doesn't feel like an adventure anymore.
(Incidentally, you save a lot of time if you don't loot, and my player never does if there are buffs involved. I've seen him get 5 encounters out of a 15 round Haste.)
Quite a lot of the prep time is shopping; and if you reduce the buffs, the shopping increases to compensate. It's a tradeoff.
In our RotRL game the player deliberately gave me characters who don't do as much buffing, and also don't do in-and-out. It's more fun, but they're frighteningly weak for their level. (And I think Mokmurian is about to kill them all.)
Mary