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For those of you who are deep into the STAP or have finished what would you have don't differently if you could start again? For DMs would you have run the Tide the same or made some changes (if so, what would you change?)? If you are a player, how was your vision now as opposed as when you started the game? Would you have played a different character?
Hind sight is always 20/20: Your ideas/ experiences may help others. Please share your view points!
I am playing a straight wizard, 18lvl. He is from a minor noble family of Sasserine and is secretly part of the Seeker faction. I would not have changed a thing as I have had a blast playing "Alonzo Kent." We did however have a member of our group play a chaotic good pc, while the rest of the group was lawful neutral, and that caused a bit of a problem at times. Unlike SCAP and AoW having the majority of the group playing with "loose morals" or a more neutral viewpoint pays off in the long run.
Bandit of LV
well, having the characters deep in 19th level territories (with only two - almost three, one since the second advanture ?) of the original group remaining, but the fervour slowly ebbing (maybe because our group alwaysconsidered cavorting with hierachy of Hell and the Abyss as something to be done at epic levels ) I would consider doing the following, which of course would mean lengthy rewrites and extensions, as well as shfits in levels.
- I would spend more time on the Isle, exploring its ancient Olman civilisation and it fall, possibly replacing WoD and EoE as adventures. More dinosaurs and "Lost World" (I blame the "Worlds of King Kong" book from WETA workshops ), going into details about the strange magical forces at work there, the odd fauna, the mysterious variety of life on the Isle. Perhaps make the dinosaurs etc be affected by the magical forces at work there, perhaps even get affected by the savage fever ?
- more shipboard adventure, more piracy. Definitely ! Everyone expetced more of that ever since the palyer's guide and the dose was barely satisfying. I would definitely replace some "land adventure" in SWW with shipboard-encounters and scenes - definitely Tamoachan, the Sargasso would go as well since it is bascially a nautical-flavoured land-encounter... But we might be a special case
- More 'organized humanoids' as "the enemy". Single BBEG simply don't cut is as opposition IMHO , a group (and be it only two ) of cooperating NPCs is far more effective, while again appearing much less threatening/harder to estimate initially. Plus, it appears pretty hilarious that except for Scuttlecove, the only effective high-level humanoids are the heroes (I am not counting the skin-walker tribes in service of Khala ). besides it is much easier to maintain villain-continuity, if you fight a group of guys, with some members fleeing/escaping from a loosing battle.
And the lack of capable spell-casting opponents throughout the first few adventures is simply appalingly sloppy design, sorry to say. The BoNS characters in our camapign hardly bothered to pick, less even prepare, anti-spell/magical defense maneuvres until finally TLD's Brain Collector. And even afterwards... Just in time for Khala, though. One of the dangers of writing an AP in installments, it is hard to get an overall balance for the opposition.
- More Olmani... ruins, tribes, undead-infested locations, strange rituals and spirits. Strange pets, poisons, foods, body-markings and customs. The poor guys really just were stage-props, luckily we had a player jump to their aid (kudos Finn ! As always....) and fill the guys with life and texture through his fantastic olmani spirit shaman.
But in a way this really highlighted the problem - if you play in exotic locations, many players are bound to get very very interested in the exotic stuff. And want to interact with it, not act in front of it. o, IMHO, it should be part of the adventure's proceedings far more than it was in ToD, TLD and CoBI....
- I might add a foreshadowing scene or two (or more) into TiNH and BWG, having upcoming things mentioned in passing or with sudden strange/erroneous visions... twin-headed shadows on nearby walls, mentions of Scuttlecove and its extreme depravity, stories of fantastic magical items like the "wakeportals" told by rum-sodded mooches in harbourside inns... the works..... perhaps even a Larvae with a human head, pickled in the halls of the seekers as a specimen from the Abyss (hinting at the eventual fate of VV ).
One might even have the players have a run-in with Vanthus _before_ they actually know who he is, giving them a first-hand clue to and experience with his personality, something that I found sorely lacking. Really ! I mean, they meet him face to face in ToD... and kill him.... they never get to actually "know" the guy. I had two players wonder for a long time how _his_side of the story might sound, although that was actually before he became a death knight.
And IMHO, it is not really necessary for Lavinia to explain to the characters her troubles with Vanthus (a family matter after all ) before the vault scene in TiNH. So, lot's of time and opportunity.
But, let's not get the wrong impression - STAP was so far, and in all likelihood will remain so for the last two installments, a fantastic experience and superior adventure design. All of the above is mainly due to the limitation of Dungeon's size and perhaps the focus of my group/me as a GM.
As a DM in the middle of WoD looking back, the biggest change I would do is replace the Korpus.
I would make them a different non-aquatic race. In the Lightless Depths, flooding them out never seemed like a good plan and I felt a little silly pushing it as a good plan. Plus the attack by the Korpus scouts on palanquins was really lame. I had trouble building up their menace, the way they were written. There were so many kludges to have them even function in a dry environment (stashes of flying potions and decanters of endless water everywhere.)
Overall it has been an awesome path and lot of fun, with the exception of that I would not change anything else.
These are great suggestions! To date this is my favorite Adventure Path and I hope to run (although an abridged version) in the future.
As a DM what else would you cut out? What would you add?
As a player what events were the best/ most exciting/ interesting?
we played yesterday, and incidentally I popped that particular question to the guys when we took a "kitchen break". Interesting responses came up - quite a bit of questions aimed at what I may have written into the campaign and what was "original", but also how some things ticked and interacted. Since they are well past many of the original locations I gave some explanations....
Among the highlights were
- they loved the passage on the "Sea Wyvern", qutfitting it, sailing it, crewing etc. the works ! They would have loved doing more things with it, and were very happy to sail it into the Abyss, along the Styx etc. They just felt, it got short shrifted overall, and had become more of a glorified band-bus than a real location which they were doing things "in".
Then again, my group is extremly nautically and navally inclined because of its background and other hobbies. So am I. Exceedingly so, by normal land-locked people's view of thing, I guess. These guys debate the differing methos of caulking hulls and what materials to use in the bolts and braces..... and enjoy it tremendously.
- The ToD finale was probably the high-point with regard to battles. They found it invigorating challenging, loved the planning and setting and only wished it had been more extensive or over the top in places. They deeply hated the Crimson Fleet hideout (the "Wreck") which they called stupid, far fetched and utterly distracting from the enjoyment of teh story arc in Scuttlecove. One player ( Claude) stated that he almost had asked me if we could take a break from the STAP after that, since he had been swallowing comments and disbelieving/doubting questions throughout the two sessions they spent there, and two others grumbled assent over that. They also found the villains and monstrosities there pretty "lame" and too clicheed, and hadn't really enjoyed those session. Especially since they had already guesstimated that Vanthus would be gone and had worked divinations to that effect - but gone "through the motions" nevertheless.
Kraken's Cove on the other hand was a favourite,but more due to actions they took there themselves, rather than because of the cocnceptualised location. I had also reworked the placement of the location to a coastal cove , not up a shallow, narrow river no deep-water sailing ship could easily navigate to circumvent some disbelieving comments there.
Oh, and they griped that the "warp-zombies" from BWG (aka those infected with the Savage Fever) never made a real re-appearance.
They would have loved seeing those on the Isle, especially on the plateau and would have considered them far more interesting than the "Skin Walkers". They realyl kept watching for them since they (corrcetly) believed that the original Olmani city had been savaged by a Shadow Pearl, and expected residual effect of that to remain
I will have to add hordes of them to the finale in the Abyss, I guess... Hordes of self-destrucing raving zombies ! Who needs demons after those ?
- the guys also liked the low-level Sasserinian part, mostly since there were strong dynamics of social interaction, power-mongering and cultural surprise which they loved.
- they regretted not having had more naval encounters - although I had already added two naval battles to their journey to Scuttlecove, plus a social interactive encounter at sea to provide some groundwork for Scuttlecove's workings. They never wanted to be straight out priates or buccaneers (plundering for a livelihood ) but they loved the exploring/marauding theme, probably seeing themselves as fantasy's Francis Drakes
- The "worst" encounter/location was the utterly illogical "Dark Pass". Claude called it "the stupidest location he had ever gamed through in the last decade", since its layout made absolutely no sense to them, channeling traffic through a series of tombs or a small bendy side-chamber.. and hiding the keys to thelocked front gate on the inside, inside a secret burial chambr (guarded by mummies !) and then inside a coffin as well. Yeah... right.... very dungeonic, but very little sense as well.
I didn't have the heart to tell them I removed the pudding from the alternative passage.... plus hiding another set of keys in a pillar at the northern end of the pass. Looking back, that area would certainly undergo a massive design-refit, but I was pretty busy at the office back then... so it stayed, only slightly modified.....
They liked the haunted Olmani villages right after the pass, but those were mine, so I must have done something correctly back then.
- They appreciated the Jade Ravens (aka "the failed heroes"), but mostly in retrospective, as the guys who did not quite make the grade, and finally paid for it in Scuttlecove. They would have liked more interaction with them, but that is hindsight, I guess.
- The most hated monster was the "brain collector", but that was mainly due to the fact of it almost wiping the group /they barely beat a fighting retreat, ahem teleported away the first time round) and being utterly freakish to boot. Emraag (massively overkilled through planning, check the "Glories" ) was a favourite gloating moment, too. They quibbed they had always wanted to have ago at a dragon in the camapign (and were miffed when i told them there had been one on the Isle even... of course, I am not going to tell them about the Linnorms straight ahead in the next sessions, hehe ).
Olangru was not all that memorable in hindsight - spooky and a nuiscance, but nothing that sood out to them.
so, that's it for the guys
We have actually already settled on doing "Curse of the Crimson Throne" in summer (mostly due to the city.theme that has been appearant so far), planning to finsich the STAP over the whitsun holidays in a multi-session weekend.
Oh,and an odd observation - I find the reminiscing and gloating over past endeavours and victories becomes less pronounced at higher levels, were the players and characters get quite confident in their abilities. Odd.....
I seem to think that a lot of the lower level adventures where better than the high level ones in STAP. In my view (and I have stated this before on this forum) the adventure changed from more explore and roll play to heavy handed combat. I still love this adventure path greatly, just trying to find a balance.
we have not finished but i play a strait warmage with a loose personality and a good heart but it has gotten to be hard trying to work with the party like a normal mage because i cant use spells like fly, true seeing, ect so it has made it a little hearder on the part. god forbid a fifth lvl char cast invisability and our party is just out of luck lol. but besides not being able to help the party a little more we have had an awesome time. by the way this will be my first time to 20lvl and my first full AP/and longest game so WOOT THANK YOU WIZARDS AND PAIZO! AND THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO WROTE THE AP
I've found this with my PCs as well. At low to mid its a pretty good class since its great artillery but there comes a time when the mages primary job is the parties problem solver and acting as artillery is very much a secondary roll. The Warmage can't take this role. Warmages make excellent secondary casters in the party but your pretty handy capped at the higher levels if you don't either have a mage or a sorcerer who has been very careful with selecting his spells (and has a lot of scrolls - 'cause you just don't know when you might need 'that' spell).
I've found this with my PCs as well. At low to mid its a pretty good class since its great artillery but there comes a time when the mages primary job is the parties problem solver and acting as artillery is very much a secondary roll. The Warmage can't take this role. Warmages make excellent secondary casters in the party but your pretty handy capped at the higher levels if you don't either have a mage or a sorcerer who has been very careful with selecting his spells (and has a lot of scrolls - 'cause you just don't know when you might need 'that' spell).
Which makes it a shame, that arcane casters get so short-shrifted on spellbooks, specific loot and general love throughout the STAP. Luckily our wizard took an elf option that allowed him access to extra spells each level, but for a time he was pretty grumpy. Our divine caster took up some of the "utility" slack by playing a spirit shaman with the scribe scroll feat (carving bones and breaking them in fancy ways - Str check depending on spell-level !).... but still.
Warmages (we had one for a short time )are wonderful damage potential and very very little else. Very "tabletop" in feeling
I began running the campaign with only two players, it was pretty rough. We had a TPK at Kraken’s Cove. In hind sight I should have done something to keep them alive, like having two PCs each, or gestalt or a few extra levels or something. If you have a group of 4 or more don’t worry about it, but if you try to play with 3 or less be careful, this campaign is deadly.
As a DM in the middle of WoD looking back, the biggest change I would do is replace the Korpus.
I would make them a different non-aquatic race. In the Lightless Depths, flooding them out never seemed like a good plan and I felt a little silly pushing it as a good plan. Plus the attack by the Korpus scouts on palanquins was really lame. I had trouble building up their menace, the way they were written. There were so many kludges to have them even function in a dry environment (stashes of flying potions and decanters of endless water everywhere.)
Overall it has been an awesome path and lot of fun, with the exception of that I would not change anything else.
You've convinced me, I didn't like them much to begin with. I'm still in SWW and this thread is very helpful. I'm going to switch out the Kopru with something else, any suggestions?
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- I would spend more time on the Isle, exploring its ancient Olman civilisation and it fall, possibly replacing WoD and EoE as adventures. More dinosaurs and "Lost World" (I blame the "Worlds of King Kong" book from WETA workshops ), going into details about the strange magical forces at work there, the odd fauna, the mysterious variety of life on the Isle. Perhaps make the dinosaurs etc be affected by the magical forces at work there, perhaps even get affected by the savage fever ?
I am planning on using quite a bit from Blackdirge!
I'd put Lavinia on the Sea Wyvern for SWW and HTBM so that the PCs get to know her and care about her later in the campaign.
You've convinced me, I didn't like them much to begin with. I'm still in SWW and this thread is very helpful. I'm going to switch out the Kopru with something else, any suggestions?
Crazy idea. Instead of completely rewriting it, you could do this: I saw another posting mentioning that the savage creatures really only show up once and that is a bummer. They were great foreshadowing that never panned out. So maybe you could kill two birds with one stone.
The Savage City
Keep a few select Korpus bad guys in the ziggurat as the master minds. (the priest, 4 bohemoths and 4 normal ones?) They are using the power of the ziggurat to extend the range and scope of their mind control powers. This is controlling their landbound army as well as keeping the living structures of the city pacified and healthy. The party would never meet them until they entered the pyramid. Keep each pyramid room filed with water and then there is no logic gap.
The rest of their army would be savage Olman warriors and priests. Captured warriors mutated by the shadow pearls and bred into a dark society serving Demogorgon. They could be living in Golismorga filling the city in a weird mockery of the former great city of Thanaclan that stood far above on the plateau.
The party could then take on the adventure one of two ways depending on how clever they are. 1)As written, drowning the the evil savage tide mutants in a cleansing wave from the sea or 2) By sneaking into the ziggurat, destroying the Korpus/bilewreth (and the itself pyramid even) at the center and letting the Savage Olman and the city itself sink into self destructive chaos.
Hmmm... maybe the Korpus are leaching the power of Tlaoc's Tear to sustain the pyramid (and the brain collector is its "guard", fooling the Korpus and bidding its time until he figures out how to channel the power for himself.)
Hee hee, this makes me want to run this Path again, even though I am not finished the first time yet.
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Just skimmed thru the thread. Funny about TLD. When running it I felt that it was the lowpoint in the path. The koprus, aboleths, brain collectors etc. It was for my party I think a bit confusing in terms of the background and after coming down the glorious high that is TOD, Depths just felt like a bit of a slough.
If I had to run the path again I would just forgo the whole TLD entirely. The PCs crush the Crimson invasion and turn to face their real enemy atop the plateau. CoBI to compare felt like it had more of a thrust as the party knew they were finally wrangling with the real foe. Khala is a great encounter (Xerkamat too). In hindsight, TLD was an unneeded detour.
Oh and Vanthus needed much more stagetime. The party didn't like the guy but not too much of that 'you again!" hate either.
There was a second ship 'the nightshark' in SWW when the party is running the blockade. I plan to have this as Vanthus flagship, with appearances three or four times including the wreck. I have added more savage critters (abolith city, fort greenrock, the maw, probably one of the infamous seven. EofE and WoD will be shrunk into one adventure with gathering info of allies as the same goal. this is all plan as we are only in SWW now.
I'm adding an abbreviated version of DCC #7, Secret of Smuggler's Cove, between BWG and SWW. I'm changing the bandits to a small group of the Crimson Fleet, and Vanthus PRE-Lemurian will be there as it's commander. The finale of the mini adventure will allow the party to truly get a piece of him for the first time before he runs off using an item to teleport (Haven't decided what yet). This way when he shows up all demony its a pain, then death knighty even more so. Theyve already tried to kill him in their only encounter (In TiNH, the barbarian beat him on initiative and chucked a spear at him, and almost critted him before he could shut them into the parrot island caves. So they effectively have already drew first blood...) SO that I hope fixes my Vanthus issues. As for the Kopru I understand they are Old School Isle fixtures, but may remove them aswell but have no idea what to replace.
Has anyone tried to insert war of the wielded between Bullywug Gambit and Sea Wyvern's Wake? How did you tie in the adventures?
For the love of god, change the shrine of duplicity or remove it. Either make it a simple puzzle or make it non-existent. It is just a huge steaming pile of Gygaxian buzzkiller. It takes hours IRL to puzzle through it, it is misleading as you get punished for doing the right thing, repeatedly, and it kills the whole 'rescue' vibe whilst you are trying to figure it out.
One of the inside jokes of the group is the multitude of stuck doors in the...
This almost derailed the campaign from the start. Then again, I game with a group that isn't savvy on old-school dungeon crawling, so they had a bias. Considering that the dungeon is pretty complex anyway, I'd just remove that "stuck door" problem from the start.
Also, the Shrine of Duplicity is pretty vague and difficult to surmise how to overcome.
Decide if you want to play out some of the large scale battles over a large battlemap, or suspend disbelief, and have your PCs engage in localized skirmishes. Both have their pluses and minuses. I opted for the large-scale battles, and one of these generally took roughly four hours, and composed the entirety of the night of gaming. Still, the players always loved them, and the battlefield control it offered them, the freedom for their characters to do what they wanted, and made long-range abilities matter. Still, let players know there may be long gaps between their turns, and keep them focused.
Introduce some kind of motivation for the PCs to flood...
In Scuttlecove...
Also, I've noticed this isn't too big of a problem, but make copies of stat blocks in Serpents of Scuttlecove for yourself as a DM (or at least use page markers), so you don't end up tearing the pages of your magazine, dancing around between three separate places for stat blocks and tactics. First time I ever considered the advantages of the Delve Format used in Wizards modules.
Also in Serpents of Scuttlecove...
In Enemies of My Enemy...
In Prince of Demons...
For the very last dungeon, don't hold back. I invented whole-cloth new items or abilities for its denizens, and made it even more memorable. This is your sign-off on the campaign, and by now, you will know your parties strengths and weaknesses; plan accordingly.
A couple asides:
Hezrou show up all over at mid and high levels, and they love using unholy blight, it seems. This damage is difficult or impossible to resist, so be careful spamming these area effects on PCs if the PCs are ambushed by them.
Also, blasphemy is a devastating spell for demons to have at-will. Make it a 1/day spell, or once every 1d4 rounds, or something, and your players won't pour sugar in your gas tank as they storm out angry at the liquid cheese your poured over them. (Didn't actually happen.)
Finally, the "Thrown Weapon Master" prestige class is too powerful in this campaign. A player played one with the Two-Weapon Fighting feats and devastated big monsters with terrible touch ACs. Since many of the dinosaur-styled or other big monster enemies have poor touch ACs, this prestige class may, again, be too good for this campaign.
To anyone starting this campaign, have fun! It gave my gaming group a year and a half of enjoyable Friday nights.