Serpent's Skull includes a new Oracle Mystery (Juju) which I understand makes an even better non-evil necromancer than either the Bones Mystery, the Undead Bloodline, or a Necromancy Specialist Wizard. Also, for your AC-oriented characters, they don't have to increase the size of the mounts/AC's when the size increase becomes available.
I would counter Pan's comments regarding Necromancy & Carrion Crown. Ustalav is a very difficult place to be a Necromancer in if you don't want the majority of your interactions with the commonfolk to be of the 'torches & pitchforks' variety.
Serpent's Skull has considerably more outside/large-scale encounter zones then Carrion's Crown...CC is, for practical purposes, a bunch of trekking from one dungeon to another dungeon. SS is about moving from one encounter zone to another, and most of them are outside or big enough that it doesn't matter.
Serpent's Skull is a sandbox, and CC is a bunch of dungeon crawls.
A necromancer will probably do really well in SS, because the natives don't care as much as they would in Ustalav...and you're dealing with potential army situations AND evil allies, who also have no problem with undead.
Just remember the Evil clerics might take them away from you.
For Carrion Crown, you want ANTI-undead, not more undead.
==Aelryinth
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I have GM'd both to a certain point here's the rundown:
Carrion Crown:
It's a linear AP but that does not make it bad by any stretch. Basically it's 6 book chase sequence. Go to place X, investigate strange goings on, defeat evil bad guy Y, get instructions of where to go next. Each book is well done and there are some fun NPC's to interact with.
Issues to consider:
1) There's not much down time between adventures so crafting items is difficult.
2) Book 5 can be nothing but a combat grind if you take a certain option.
3) The links between adventures are a little precarious.
4) Book 4 doesn't link with the other adventures very well (it's a great mod though)
5) Book 2 has what is effectively a very long side quest which doesn't tie into the main plot very well. Some players may complain about this.
6) The BBEG is absent until book 6.
That said this AP easily pops in as my second favourite (behind LoF) because the atmosphere is so well evoked.
Serpent's Skull:
This is a big sandbox, too big for my tastes. People tend to like Book 1 but are less enthused about the rest of the AP. In my experience 6 PC deaths in book 1 and a near TPK later turned this one into a meatgrinder. That said there are some nice moments.
Issues to consider:
1) Book 3 sucks. It is in a no holds barred beatdown with Memory of Darkness for worst AP volume ever. A decent GM will have to do some remedial work with this one to get it running properly.
2) The setup for going into the jungle is forced. Basically the motivation is entirely greed at all the wonderful treasure you will find. Unfortunately this treasure will have to be shared with an NPC faction none of whom are developed well. Basically PC's can feel forced to work for an NPC faction who don't actually seem to do anything.
3) The fellow NPC castaways on the island can end up being annoying to the players because as written they are portrayed as a group of unlikeable whiners with issues. Players can feel like they are babysitting them rather that feeling that they are a valuable part of the survival effort.
4) For what is ostensibly a treasure hunt, the treasure available is very poor with limited chance to resupply unless you have access to teleport.
5) Book 1 can be a long drawn out ordeal of disease and suffering.
I didn't get past book 2 of this one because my players felt like they were being forced into doing things that appeared to have no actual benefit. My advice? Make the castaways into likeable characters who bring actual benefits to the group and get the players to feel a connection to them. That way the choice of faction in book 2 should feel like helping a friend rather than an obligation.
My verdict? Carrion Crown is far easier but Serpent's Skull can work if you don't make the missteps I did. Personally I would go for CC but that's because I loved it in a way that I didn't with SerS.
Although i haven't played or read serpent skull i have played and somewhat read the first two books of carrion crown, also a friend of mine also played the first two books in another group. Well what i have to say is that neither of us liked it because of a few reasons:
1) A little too lethal unless you have at least two characters who can channel positive energy, or at least a lot of characters who can use positive energy.
2) The second book seems like a laugh to me for two reasons, the first is that it feels like just one giant sidetrack with minimal or no connection to the story, and the second is that to me it seems like too much fuss over nothing by the town, they should either kill him quickly if they believe that it's guilty or if they believe that it's innocent they could just call for someone important and/or capable in order to prove it's innosence. In short i find it very bad the way they try to force a moral dilema and philosofical thinking in a world where inheritor's cruseders exist.
To sum up, my advice is that if you, as the DM, can't think that you can keep the horror theme at the top ALL the time then i don't reccomend you to run carrion crown, the meat grinder hack and slash, meatgrinder serpent skull sounds a lot better to me, provided that the challenge isn't something to laugh at.
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So far our S&S game has been solid, despite the many pitfalls it's supposed to have. On the issue of the NPC factions that FallofCamelot mentioned, our GM presented at least one faction as a group that we would not be forced into working with, instead presenting them as a group that would ensure our safety and the success of the expedition in exchange for an artifact they were interested in. That made having them tag along a lot less frustrating, and seems like a good way to fix that problem with the AP.
As for the actual motivation of the AP (the treasure hunt), it helps to have characters who have some need of vast sums of wealth. One of our PCs is a sort of professional adventurer, but is also now looking for funds to resurrect his deceased wife (a nasty little piece of genius by the GM). Another actually is just in it for the wealth and power, so having PCs who have an actual reason to take huge risks for wealth is a boon as well.
It sounds like your party would fit Serpent's Skull much better than Carrion Crown, IMO. As has been pointed out, playing a necromancer in CC could get the PC into a lot of hairy situations very frequently, and there's been plenty of necromancy to interest him in S&S thus far. The saurian shaman would fit Serpent's Skull well, but be hugely anachronistic in CC. The rest of the party sounds like they could fit right into either just fine. S&S isn't Paizo's strongest AP, but so long as you read the forum posts and heed the mistakes of those who came before you, you should be just fine :]
Alternatively, talk to the two players with out of place characters and see if they'll consider something more "gothic horror-y" & play through the better AP (sounds like your necromancer's pretty dead set though).
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It isn't that difficult. Having channel energy is a plus though, but then again it always is. The haunts are more difficult to deal with if you don't have it though. I would strongly advise it.
The trial in book 2 did not advance the plot. It was cool in the sense that it was different. I liked it for the same reason I liked the play in CoT. I have noticed that the AP seems to have something that is not "par for the course" in each of their AP's. In short it is not necessarily a bad thing, but if your players are the type to want everything to connect perfectly then it might not work.
I did not even know that archetype existed, but even so finding one is probably not all that easy, but even if one is around that does not mean anyone can prove he has that power, and he is not faking it.
I personally didn't even try to push the horror theme. I looked at it as a tribute to all the old movies I used to watch like Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, and so on. I did keep the drama up by having my players near to death on several occasions. --> I didn't do anything special. The dice gods just showed up at the right time.
I did not really care for book 4 as a part of the story because it seemed to be more like a side trek than a part of the story. It is interesting though, but I think it would have been better as its own module. If I get to run it again I will probably replace it with something else.
PS:The game does give out consumables instead of permanent magic items a lot more than other AP's do. It makes the players weaker in the longrun. I would suggest cutting back on the consumables.
Well I'm a bit partial to Serpent's Skull. But maybe it's because of the Paper Minis...
Serpent's Skull #1, Serpent's Skull #2, Serpent's Skull #3, Serpent's Skull #4, Serpent's Skull #5, Serpent's Skull #6, Serpent's Skull Bestiary
I think either one can work. The question is how much work do you want to put in as a GM. SS will require more work on your part, from what I have read about it.
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Carrion Crown requires an extreme amount of buy-in from your PCs. They have to want to do a Gothic Horror campaign, and want to build PCs that will be outcasts and reviled while selflessly trying to save the world. You also have to take it seriously: it falls apart if you are too laid back. If the PCs aren't 100% on board with this, the campaign will fail. That being said, it's definately the better campaign overal.
Serpent's Skull doesn't care what you are. You could be good, evil, or just greedy. Your PCs can take it seriously, or treat it as one big joke. You're given a HUGE HUGE playground, and can do WHATEVER you want in it. There's nothing you can really do to break theme. Based on your group description, I would recommend this AP for you group. That being said, um, check out my review of book 3 if you have the time.
For what it's worth, I'm playing SS. We're currently part-way through Vol 2 and we're having a great time so far. We've only had the one PC death to date (knock wood) and that was somewhat self-inflicted.
The factions as presented to us did not seem forced at all. The way they were presented by our DM, 5 (or so) factions got hold of the news of our discovery in Vol 1 and were going to make a play for it, regardless of our involvement. Now, we could choose who we wanted to help or choose to be under-equipped and drastically out-gunned for a solo try. We were able to define our own terms to some extent as well.
So far so good and no regrets. :-) We're very much enjoying what sandbox we are allowed but I have the impression that buried under that sand somewhere is still a railroad in good shape if that's required. What do *you* want to run? You will sustain yourself much more enjoyably if you run to *your* tastes as well as your players'. Good luck!
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When my turn to DM came around, I had the opportunity to run either SS or CC as well (Our other active DM had just started running KM... our group rotates DMs)
I chose SS for two reasons:
1. I'm not a big gothic fan and my players aren't serious enough to take a horror campaign seriously.
2. The "trust" system in the first book immediately turned me off.
That being said, I'm having a BLAST running SS and my players are loving it, but there's a few things you should know:
1. The AP as written really isn't that good if you try to run it straight from the book. They give you the outline of a really great open-ended adventure, but -as written- all the NPCs/Factions are static and do nothing.
2. The AP is AWESOME if you're willing to flex your creative muscles and really flesh out the very nice outline they give you. If you like taking the given NPCs and deciding where they're going to go and what they're going to do (given their goals), you'll like this adventure.
3. Battle Maps. You have to be comfortable with drawing a lot of maps on the fly. And I mean a LOT of them. About half of book 1 is wilderness encounters with no maps, most of the race in book 2 is wilderness encounters with no maps and the entirety of book 3 has... you guessed it... no maps. It gets much better from there, honest!
Now if you're perfectly comfortable grabbing a few pieces from the Ruins Map Pack, some tiles from the D&D Essensials Wilderness set, whipping them on the board and running with it (those are the two sets I've been using to good effect), then this isn't a problem.
Would I recommend this AP to a first time DM? Probably not. You really have to breath life into the castaways in book 1 to make them real people (both likeable and unlikeable), the factions in book 2 to make them good allies/enemies and the tribes in book 3 to make book 3 something other than a meatgrinder. With 20+ years as a DM I'm sure you wouldn't have a problem with this though, but you've got to enjoy it. SS has truly been a labor of love for me.