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After 13 months of bi-weekly play, my players finally defeated Ileosa! Just wanted to say thanks to all you guys, these boards just plain rock. Special thanks to Steev42 whose conversions were extremely helpful.
Bottom line: There's a reason why CotCT wins almost every "Best AP" poll. The reason: It's top-to-bottom awesome. I modified the linear quest chain in History of Ashes, removed some filler fights in Scarwall and made some substantial changes to Crown of Fangs. Other than that, pure perfection (although the Gaedren Lamm storyline didn't go over too well).
Ileosa, as others have stated, is an unusual enemy for the final fight. She's got almost no way to inflict direct damage. Instead she relies on enchantment spells to make the PCs fight each other. Sounds good on paper, but with Protection From Spells and the like, my players made all important saves. It took them some time to wear the Queen down, but the party was never in real danger. You might want to change her build (there's a thread here) to make her more of a direct threat.
Anyway, that was fun. My players are in the process of voting for the next AP. Right now, Serpent's Skull looks like an early favorite. See you there!
Congratulations! Nice to see another enthusiastic fan of this AP.
13 months is a tight schedule to handle this AP. We're playing once every two weeks and I'm foreseeing at least four years, although I'm adding a ton of material. We started four months ago with 'prelude' sessions, where the PCs are still kids. Apart from the old fishery, we haven't played through anything from the first module yet, and it will be a couple of sessions before we pick up with the death of the king (who is still alive in my campaign) and the chaos that follows. For now the PCs are still making their way through the city, getting to know all kinds of NPCs. If you're interested, you can read up on our adventures in the campaign journal section.
I wish you heaps of fun with your next AP!
13 months!? Ugh, I've been playing Curse for 3 years now, and they've only just made it to the second floor of Scarwall. Your players must be a lot more focused than mine are :P
Congratulations on completing the AP!
What was the party set up with the Ileosa showdown? I started an advice thread for a rebuilt Ileosa awhile back, and while I've pretty much settled on how I'm going to run her, I'm curious about other party's fights and their set ups.
Congratz!
@MrVergee: The prelude sessions sound like an awesome idea to introduce Lamm and get the players to hate him! Will have a look at your campaign log.
@Tels: Party was Paladin, Rogue, Magus, Druid, Wizard, all at lvl 15. They were all buffed to the gills, especially with Aura of Justice and Protection From Spells. Thing is, nobody thought about fly spells, so the Magus and the Rogue couldn't do much at all. The Druid was pretty much stuck with support duty, so it fell to the Paladin (wielding Serithial) followed Ileosa to get her into melee while the Wizard did some damage with Chain Lightning and the like. In the end, he blinded her with Power Word while the Druid dispelled her Wings of Flying. On the ground, the party made short work of her.
I've mostly tried to Dominate or Song of Discord the party, combined with Mirror Images and the like to survive longer. All saves were made, though. A memorable battle nonetheless, but hardly edge-of-your-seat-exciting. I studied your thread but decided to run Ileosa as written, since I really wanted to have a Bard BBEG. Oh well, can't win 'em all. ;)
Congratulations! Nice to see another enthusiastic fan of this AP.
13 months is a tight schedule to handle this AP. We're playing once every two weeks and I'm foreseeing at least four years, although I'm adding a ton of material.
Tight? Damn. 13 months is too long for an AP in my group, we usually finish in 8-12 months.
Tight? Damn. 13 months is too long for an AP in my group, we usually finish in 8-12 months.Congratulations! Nice to see another enthusiastic fan of this AP.
13 months is a tight schedule to handle this AP. We're playing once every two weeks and I'm foreseeing at least four years, although I'm adding a ton of material.
Wow. What's your play schedule like though? Twelve months of all-day-Saturday gaming is a lot different than twelve months of three-to-four-hours once-every-other-week gaming.
My group is once-a-week, four-to-five hours, and one year of gaming got us halfway through Savage Tide (then that game collapsed) and a different 13-month span got us two chapters and change into Kingmaker, for example.
Wow. What's your play schedule like though? Twelve months of all-day-Saturday gaming is a lot different than twelve months of three-to-four-hours once-every-other-week gaming.
Quite right, Orthos, the gaming schedule makes all the difference. Sadly we're in the second group, playing once every two weeks for about three to four hours. The upside is that this slow pace allows me to keep up writing the journal, which would be a lot tougher if we played more.
Ugh, I'm playing in Kingmaker, Legacy of Fire, a homebrew 3.5 (now converting to Pathfinder), and running Curse. We get to play once every 4 weeks, but we play for 8 - 10 hour sessions.
Upside? I have lots of prep-time :)
Wow. What's your play schedule like though? Twelve months of all-day-Saturday gaming is a lot different than twelve months of three-to-four-hours once-every-other-week gaming.
Once a week (but it usually amounts to less than that on average, say 4 sessions in 5 weeks), 4-6 hours.
Wow. What's your play schedule like though? Twelve months of all-day-Saturday gaming is a lot different than twelve months of three-to-four-hours once-every-other-week gaming.Once a week (but it usually amounts to less than that on average, say 4 sessions in 5 weeks), 4-6 hours.
So, about the same as my group, if slightly longer individual sessions.
In that case wow, you guys just blitz through things. We've never gotten further than level 10-12 in a straight year of gaming at that same schedule.
For us, we're going to play our 21 session in CotCT, and we'll be finishing up Scarwall and starting Crown of Fangs. We only play once a month, so I tend to speed through the "routine parts" (like narrating long outdoor treks when nothing happens, or bypassing the roleplaying of buying and selling of loot after we've done it a few times.)
I try to keep it interesting by getting to the 'meaty' parts faster...
Ultradan
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The PCs defeated her Majesty Ileosa yesterday evening! We had a blast with this AP over 2.5 years (roughly one session per month).
Big thanks to everyone on this forum; your contributions truly made the game unforgettable! (shoutout to AwesomenessDog, Inspectre, and Evilthorne if you're reading this!) There are incredible ideas scattered throughout the posts.
The party boss now sits on the Crimson Throne, the ranger leads the new official Thieves Guild, the paladin takes charge of the re-founded Sable Company, the rogue reigns over the Arkona house, and the changeling assassin serves the new queen. They've come a long way since their encounter with Gaedren Lamm.
Time to seek out a new AP :-)
Congrats! If you want a mild continuance of the events of CT, Shattered Star has several Grey Maiden holdouts in some of the earlier books.
Thank you :-) We'll probably go for a 2E adventure path, but we don't have decided anything yet. So far, it converge towards Outlaws of Alkenstar, so something in a new direction :-)
The PCs defeated her Majesty Ileosa yesterday evening! We had a blast with this AP over 2.5 years (roughly one session per month).
Big thanks to everyone on this forum; your contributions truly made the game unforgettable! (shoutout to AwesomenessDog, Inspectre, and Evilthorne if you're reading this!) There are incredible ideas scattered throughout the posts.
The party boss now sits on the Crimson Throne, the ranger leads the new official Thieves Guild, the paladin takes charge of the re-founded Sable Company, the rogue reigns over the Arkona house, and the changeling assassin serves the new queen. They've come a long way since their encounter with Gaedren Lamm.
Time to seek out a new AP :-)
Congrats! Any chance of a more in-depth review? Pros and Cons to each volume (if it's not too much trouble).
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Sure, no problem.
Volume 1:
Pros: Making Korvosa home to the PCs, meeting the NPCs. Nice way to gather the PCs together. I used Inspectre's idea of portraying the queen as poorly advised by Glorio, so it wasn't obvious she was that evil.
Cons: Nothing, really. If I had to redo it, I wouldn't mention the Hellknights.
Volume 2:
My PCs were neutral/evil, so the hook was tricky and a bit too loose for my group.
Pros: The PCs can pick and follow different leads. Interactions with the NPCs, especially the queen.
Cons: The queen's motive to spread the disease is weird, in my opinion, even for a villain. I prefer to keep the big surprise at the beginning of Chapter 3 that she is indeed that evil and dangerous.
Volume 3:
The beginning is awesome (the queen removing the arrow from her head). The Arkonas are fantastic.
Pros: The Arkonas' rotating dungeon is really cool. Great interactions with Melyia, the Seneschal, Glorio, and Vencarlo.
Cons: Think twice about the motives of Glorio and Melyia. Why do they keep the seneschal? Why do they hand him over to the PCs, or why don't they and send the PCs into the dungeon instead? Why do they want to kill each other, and why don't they? How will they consider an alliance (or not) with the PCs?
Volume 4:
We had a Shoanti PC, so he loved it.
Pros: The giant worm quest. Epic. The final confrontation with the Red Mantis. Going out of Korvosa is a bit refreshing after three volumes.
Cons: Too many side quests for my group, but as the book suggests, just pick your favorite ones.
Volume 5:
I used an idea gathered on this forum: the curse works as follows: the lethal damage to the queen is transferred to Kazavon's betrayer, who is attached as a kind of zombie in the tower. It's not so much about the holy sword as it is about removing the curse.
Pros: It's definitely epic, and it has a different atmosphere/environment than Chapters 1-3 and 4.
Cons: I didn't play it as a classic dungeon crawl, but I just picked a few fights from the book.
Volume 6:
Pros: All the alliances forged by the PCs finally come together. Special mention to Sabina, who has a very compelling reason to side with the queen but ultimately betrays her. Wow.
Cons: I also cut down on all the dungeon crawling and fights to fit the expectations of my table (not really into fights).
Generally speaking, I removed some fights a bit everywhere (in the city, in the dungeons, the Cinderlander, the otyugh at the painter's place, etc.). It's personal; we were playing about once a month and I wanted to get quickly to the meat of the story.
All in all, it was an awesome campaign. I have a lot of affection for all the NPCs. I love urban-themed campaigns, and I love the aesthetic of a few very epic moments (the giant worm, Blackjack at the trial, the queen removing the arrow from her head in the middle of the public square, the sunken queen, etc.). So I really had a blast.
Sure, no problem.
Thanks for this. Exactly what I was looking for. :)
When I read through an AP, I usually make lots of changes as I know what works and what doesn't with my group. It's always interesting to see another GM's take and ideas on an AP I'd love to run one day.
This AP (or possibly Serpent Skull) was next up after my super expanded Runelords AP.
Alas, after a recent local convention, a new player joining, and some cool takeaways rules-wise from Baldur's Gate 3 we've moved on from PF in my home game. Now the only PF I get to play is one long weekend a year with my other group where we finish one chapter each meetup. We start book 3 of Carrion Crown next January.
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I love the idea of a marathon PF weekend where you play one chapter! But 6 years for a campaign is long ^^'
I don't know the Serpent Skull AP.
On our side, we played it using 5e rules. I hope one day I will play it using PF rules, but the table wanted to play 5e, and I was fine with that. The campaign is really well written. For me, it's less effort to adapt the fight opponents' statistics than to find such a top-notch story, setups, and NPCs. This is just my perspective, and I understand it might not be shared by everyone. I wouldn't totally dismiss it for your home group if you feel you would like this AP.
For me, it's less effort to adapt the fight opponents' statistics than to find such a top-notch story, setups, and NPCs. This is just my perspective, and I understand it might not be shared by everyone. I wouldn't totally dismiss it for your home group if you feel you would like this AP.
Converting the opponent stats is the deal breaker unfortunately, that's a ton of work that the older me doesn't have time for. I may look at the 5e kingmaker conversion book for next campaign though.
Kingmaker is awesome, I am playing it for the moment (I'm not the DM). The MD is 'Banedon_421', I think he is active on the forum. Have fun!