If you allow all the multitude of splatbooks the characters most definitely will be too powerful. This is not a flaw of the adventures, as they are rather quite difficult, but a flaw of the material in the splatbooks. This has been discussed at length elsewhere so I won't rehash it here.
My recommendation is to do what I did before I started Shackled City and Age of Worms. Make a player's guide that includes character creation information. Look through the splatbooks and choose the things that you feel are appropriate to the campaign and are not unbalancing. A great example is the Undead Slayer (I'm forgeting the source) so that rouges don't loose their access to sneak attack against the multitude of undead the campaign offers up. If you don't feel like making a player's guide, at the very least, decide fairly closely, what is allowed and what is not then stick to your guns when the players start making their characters.
Doing this bit of work ahead of time will save you massive amounts of work later on and if you make a neat player's guide will really draw them into the game and make it more fun. Limited options, I feel, make for more interesting and exciting characters and campaigns.
What I did was to customize all the encounters, by changing feats, spell selection, and so on. That way, the monsters/NPCs all had access to the same splatbooks the players did.. Not to mention BoVD, the Fiendish Codexes, and Savage Species (some really nice monster feats in there).
My players got ahead of the XP curve around level 10ish, so I also had to bump up the CR by 1-2 throughout the rest of the campaign.. They still pretty much blew through the encounters after level 15 or so though.
One point of advice: Do NOT let your players have access to the Sphere of Annihilation. It just takes the fun out of the encounters if you give it to them. Just cut the Talisman of the Sphere from the loot completely (I wish I had the foresight to do that).
... That way, the monsters/NPCs all had access to the same splatbooks the players did. ...
That's a viable option as well. I just prefer to keep the paperwork on my end down as I already do massive conversions so changing the encounters like that, especially at high levels, is more than I want to do.
I've done out all the math and from the looks of everything, presuming a 4 PC party, the group should be on track through the whole game, ending at about level 22. Given the CRs of the encounters it all looked pretty challenging. I'm preparing to run this now that I'm wrapping up Shackled City so I'm interested in identifying pitfalls from people who have run the game.
Are, at what point did you give the PC's the Sphere? I am contemplating giving one of the players the sphere as he is an Entropromancer. My plan was to have the group make a journey to its resting place just prior to the last battle in Alhaster.
They got it just before the events of the final magazine.
A few things I'm adjusting in AoW.
-The Sphere will not be in the AP at all. I don't see the need for it and if anything it seems to weaken the AP climax a bit. Instead I'll be putting in some other nice items in compensation.
-I'm adjusting the NPC help the players get given. Tenser/Manzorian isn't alive in my World of Greyhawk (his return was a bit wonky IMO). I have other, less noble NPCs that will take his place and fit with my campaign backstory better.
-I'm running it with Pathfinder Rules, no 3PP stuff without prior approval. No Spell compendium, Complete books or that stuff. APG is allowed.
-I'm tailoring some encounters and BBEGs to my own standards, not to Dungeon mag specifications.
All taken together, I'm expecting my AoW to be rather brutal. The players know this and are anticipating it eagerly. I can't list all the changes I am doing because many of my players are forum regulars. But they should be good.
Have you experienced this?
What have you changed, if anything?
My answer is two-fold. No, the AP ist quite hard, and offers many encounters that can provoke a TPK. An yes, it is an easy walk for the PCs most of the time.
Part of the reason lies in "specialization". AoW is quite "themed": Undead, undead, and to a lesser degree, evil outsiders, aberrations and dragons offer the bulk of the tough monsters. True, there a mooks of every creature type, but the tough ones, the ones that should matter, are most often of this narrow group. Now, if your players are smart, and/or adapt well to the campaign (a plus in my book), they will easily defeat the biggest threats. For instance, my PCs (now at level 20) have a dedicated undead-killing ranger, plus a paladin, plus a sorcerer with "energize spell". Most have holy weapons. They alway buff with death ward, and have invested heavily in CON-boosting equipment. Thus, undead monsters go down approx. twice as fast as non-undead, and most of their special attacks are wasted. Most chaotic evil beings are easily dealt with as well. One of the last memorable (very close) fights they had was thus vs. a living, non-chaotic, non-evil giant. Dragotha (CE undead) will suffer greatly, I fear... Thus I have taken a habit of extra-reviewing feat & spell selection, defenses and tactics of undead bosses: Get mooks or spells to dispel death ward; heavily invest in AC; kill the cleric first.
The other part lies in splat books, as others have pointed out. E.g., "Mass Conviction" looks like a good idea at first, but seriously hampers all spellcasters; it's a DMs curse. You can counter this a) by controlling access, b) by allowing rules only preliminary until you have seen them im play, c) by applying spaltbook goodness to monsters as well. All of which is a lot of work - but you will learn a good deal about the game and it's rules, and it allows your players to flesh out their characters (which exacebates the specialization problem).
I'm running AOW and it seems like the players will blow away the module in later chapters.
Have you experienced this?
What have you changed, if anything?
I haven't run the game as a DM, but I've played in it, and if there's one thing I would do different, I wouldn't allow the players to buy the ring of death ward presented in one of the Wormfood articles in Dungeon Magazine. A lot of the monsters in the adventure rely on energy drain, ability drain, negative energy attacks, etc., so it's bad enough when the players cast death ward in the first place. Giving them a ring that makes them permanently immune to all of these attacks is just too much.
Incidentally, since my group played Age of Worms, we've decided to change the description of death ward and protection from energy to ensure that one spell doesn't make players essentially immune to all special attacks from undead creatures.
Protection from Energy
Protection from energy can be used to provide temporary protection from negative energy. In all other ways, this spell functions as described in the Player’s Handbook.
Death Ward
The subject is immune to all death spells, magical death effects, and energy drain. This spell does not provide protection against negative energy effects (such as from an inflict spell or chill touch). In all other ways, this spell functions as described in the Player’s Handbook.
I've been running this campaign using the PF rules and we are almost done HoHR. I had one character die in the flooded room with the invisible stalkers and another almost die in the first encounter with the octopins. So I would not say the adventure path is too easy thus far.
I have 5 PC's and am running the game right out of the magazines essentially, only converting major NPC's and new monsters.
I am only allowing official PF books which so far include the core rules and the advanced player's guide.
I agree with other posters about the splatbooks though, they can be unbalanced. I would recommend that you let your players pick a couple splatbooks to use, as a group, and limit it to that. They will more than likely pick the magic item compendium and the spell compendium, but you never know :)
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Sometimes, I wonder if I'm "doing it wrong" when I see people post about how easy AoW has been for them.
I've been running the adventure path for a while now (we're all in the 30+ age range, so family and work make the number of game nights fewer than they would have been were we still in their 20's.), and the body count I've accumulated is pretty impressive.
The thing is, I'm not trying to kill the party. I've actually had to nerf several encounters in order to avoid an inevitable TPK.
How many deaths? How many players in your group? What ruleset and books are you using?
I have also found that using the monster tactics in the Dungeon mags helps quite a bit, as sometimes the tactics are not the ideal actions the monster could take, but they do them anyways.
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How many deaths? How many players in your group? What ruleset and books are you using?
I have also found that using the monster tactics in the Dungeon mags helps quite a bit, as sometimes the tactics are not the ideal actions the monster could take, but they do them anyways.
I'm not sure of the exact number but I believe it is right about 12 character deaths at this point (we a currently in Kings of the Rift.
We are playing 3.5 rules with all WotC splatbooks available for use.
The number of players in the group has varied, but the party size has pretty much always been 6 characters (some players doubling-up).
I have done the same. There have been fights where I have had to limit myself to the monster's tactics as listed in the Dungeon magazine or actually modify them on the fly to ensure that an unconscious PC doesn't end up a dead PC.
It can be a headache to write in new PC's so I prefer to have them brought back from the dead, now that the spell is available to the group.
I find the adventures mostly hard. A few places are cakewalk (like, the entire third installment), but those are exception. The party needs to be at least moderately optimized to survive.
There are posts on these boards about DM's with multiple TPK's in AoW especially Killer GM.
I'll Vouge for that:)