Personally, I've felt the lack of an Irrisen/Elvanna presence detracted from latter parts of the AP. Thus I was going to have Part 3 include clear signs that Irrisen has White Witches that were going to Artosia (and have them wiped out as one person suggested). Part 4 would include Irrisen Witches negotiating with the Dragon who was preparing to invade with a barbarian horde. Part 5... I suspect that Rasputin would work as the connection to Elvanna, especially if there's hints that he was going to provide weapons to Elvanna and Irrisen. (Actually, that might make Part 6 rather interesting, if you find modern (well, 1920s) firearms in the possession of Irrisen soldiers in Part 6.)
In short, you see signs of Elvanna in each AP, and retain the knowledge you are fighting her. She is not the Lesser Evil. She is the Greater Evil who is not only going to conquer Golarion... but even now plans on extending her reach to the rest of Golarion's solar system and then beyond.
Baba Yaga may be evil, but her evil is personal and ultimately is incidental. She does what she wants, and has the power to do so with impunity. But she doesn't conquer entire worlds and the like. She meddles here and there out of boredom and curiosity and a lack of respect for others (because they've shown they don't deserve her respect, more often than not).
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Hm, I don't see why her being CR 30 is "stupid". "Impossible for a level 17 party", okay. But she is a mythic opponent and one which conquered a large country by herself mostly.
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Hey. Said GM chiming in. CR 30 represents a pretty off-kilter scale of power to me, especially since this campaign does not use Mythic rules. I'd peg most deities at CR 25 (effectively two solars- and I think a solar alone is powerful enough to represent a demigod, if not a minor deity), so seeing a relatively normal- if magically skilled and augmented- human be effectively as powerful as 12 of these earth-shatteringly powerful creatures is a gigantic leap to me. She does not need to be that powerful for mechanical or story reasons, and I find that gigantic number bloat like that only causes problems.
Your mileage may vary, but this is how I prefer to run things for my own campaign. Personal preferences and all that.
I like the idea of adding irriseni elements in the later campaigns.
I was thinking a group in the hoofwood or perhaps centaur city. Might also try and play up the coven as being in league with elvanna.
What are the issues people are having with book 4? Is it difficulty? Or lack of elvanna/irriseni presence? Or is it both?
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Our group is quite enjoying playing this so far (we're in book 3). The "dungeon" is interesting, the scenary worth looking at, and the combats challenging. We mostly lose track of why we're in the dungeon so the fact its a mcguffih hunt doesn't bother us.
Admittedly, the GM has made modifications (I'm not sure exactly how much).
I even quite enjoy the "working for evil" aspect. My character is a young good witch who is coming to the opinion that witchcraft may well be inherently evil. She is afraid that she will become evil. It makes for an interesting dynamic.
Both as player and as character I realize that Baba Yaga isn't THAT evil. She is much more extremely selfish than Eeeevvviiiillll. Which helps a fair bit.
Hey. Said GM chiming in. CR 30 represents a pretty off-kilter scale of power to me, especially since this campaign does not use Mythic rules. I'd peg most deities at CR 25 (effectively two solars- and I think a solar alone is powerful enough to represent a demigod, if not a minor deity), so seeing a relatively normal- if magically skilled and augmented- human be effectively as powerful as 12 of these earth-shatteringly powerful creatures is a gigantic leap to me. She does not need to be that powerful for mechanical or story reasons, and I find that gigantic number bloat like that only causes problems.
Your mileage may vary, but this is how I prefer to run things for my own campaign. Personal preferences and all that.
Erm, yeah, your mileage varies quite by a lot there to the one used by Paizo themselves. By official stats, the weakest demon lord is pegged at CR 25 and true deities don't even have an assigned CR, because they are beyond CR 30. Baba Yaga is mythic because the party is not supposed to fight her, after all.
Now, that she is as powerful as the most powerful demon lord is another thing, but arguable. Still, your CR scale is way off in regards to what Paizo themselves assume. For them, true deities are invulnerable even to high-level mythic characters (at least in their own realm) and can utterly annihilate entire metropolis with a single attack (see: Saranrae, Gormuz).
Yeah. Like I said, your mileage may vary. I don't like Paizo's power scale, so I use a different one.
If you ignore all of her mythic abilities (other than how they're already incorporated into her numbers), Baba Yaga probably clocks in as a relatively low offense but extremely high defense CR 25. Without the offensive abilities she gets from mythic, Baba Yaga's "just" an unusually tough L20 witch with high save DCs.
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I won't say this AP is a dud. Books 2, 4 and 5 look to me to be the strongest of them, while 1, 3 and 6 fall a bit flat as written.
Book 1: Probably the weakest of them, in my opinion. The adventure starts off with an excuse to get the PCs to where they need to be (save the princess!), and they find out the plot of the rest of the AP about halfway through. The second half of the adventure is better than the first, but oof, that opening. Fresh out of the box PCs run up against some pretty tough opposition before they even make it to the hunting lodge, to say nothing of the weather effects. With a lackluster hook and some questionably difficult early encounters, I feel like a rewrite on the first half of the book would make things much more interesting.
Solution: Give PCs time in the first town to get to know the inhabitants. Have them meet the noblewoman they'll be saving later on. Have them go on an adventure or two to give them some experience, both numerically and literally. The second half probably doesn't need much more embellishment - I'd leave it as-is.
Book 2: Pretty much the same setup as Book 1, but at least PCs are prepared for winter travel and have options at this point. Plus, the stuff in Whitethrone is awesome. PCs are WAY behind enemy lines here, and they need to be careful not to draw too much attention to themselves, or they end up dead. FAST.
Book 3: A good start, but while I appreciate the change from "travel to point A to point B" that has been the focus of the first two books, I'm not especially sold on the dungeon. I think I would have liked a chance to explore this untouched continent a bit further, rather then head straight to the dungeon and start killing hags. That said, I have fewer problems with this one than I do with Book 1.
Book 4: Full of awesome. It's the most sandboxy of the six, and the PCs' perceptions of how the world works are instantly challenged the moment they leave the Hut. There's a few ways the PCs can go about getting the plot coupons they need, and the volume did a pretty good job detailing the obstacles the PCs would face depending on how they go about it. There's no "wrong" way to do the first half, and I really enjoy that. There's the obligatory travel and dungeon as well, but I enjoy these more than their counterparts in Book 3. Not sure why, I should probably reread them and figure that out.
Book 5: The entire reason I made a subscription. There's a lot of awesome in this book as well. Animated tanks! Sentient mustard gas! Nikolai Tesla! Guns! GUNS! GUNS!!! Oh, and the Mad Monk himself. He's OK, I guess. ;)
Book 6: So, how do you top the awesome of Rasputin Must Die!? I'm not sure you can. I mean, after you've killed the unkillable Rasputin, where do you go? Apparently, deeper into the Hut itself. There's some good bits as the set pieces you explore tie into Baba Yaga's life, but honestly, once you've killed Rasputin three times because he just refuses to stay dead, everything else falls a little flat.
There's good stuff, and I would kill to get a party to play through Book 4, but I'm pretty sure I'd have to rewrite parts of the first three (mostly book 1) to get there.
Yeah. It's kinda hard for Elvanna to top Rasputin. I was thinking of having her escape at the end and continuing the adventure in The Witchwar Legacy with the 20th level PCs fighting a Mythic Elvanna with the Torc.
That and expanding her presence in the other books so that the threat of Elvanna isn't just a little side-thing you have to take care of, but a constant and ongoing threat.
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I am not a big fan of Elvanna's Winter Portal taking over the world. I would change this AP to be solely about Saving Baba Yaga.
Rather than the Mantle of the Black Rider, I would change it to be The Mantle of Baba Yaga. I would have each of the PCs be 'touched' by Baba Yaga as a child. It could be an old lady that help out the PC's family or Baba Yaga saving the PC from death. During this encounter, she bestowed the Mantle on them. It then lay dormant, until they meet the Black Rider. I would have this be the first encounter of the AP. The Black Rider escaped and opened the winter portal to get the PCs to fulfill their destiny. The other forces from Irrisen were sent to track down the Black Rider, oblivious to the PCs goals.
Now the PCs are the Heroes of Baba Yaga following her breadcrumbs to save her to repay the debt of her assistance in the past.
The final part of the AP can be the PCs trying to complete the Ritual, while Elvanna tries to stop them.
edited.
Book 1: Probably the weakest of them, in my opinion. The adventure starts off with an excuse to get the PCs to where they need to be (save the princess!), and they find out the plot of the rest of the AP about halfway through. The second half of the adventure is better than the first, but oof, that opening. Fresh out of the box PCs run up against some pretty tough opposition before they even make it to the hunting lodge, to say nothing of the weather effects. With a lackluster hook and some questionably difficult early encounters, I feel like a rewrite on the first half of the book would make things much more interesting.
Yeah, it's one of the few APs where I look at the enemy tactics and go "Wow, that's pretty brutal" instead of "That's boring, let's spice it up a bit".
We lost the party Bard to the ice elementals (though that was mostly of his own stupidity, he just charged ahead and got hit by the trap, then roflstomped), after he was grappled, beaten, and dragged under the ice.
Then the party almost TPK'd at the lodge. Probably would have but I decided to stop running it for unrelated reasons (the GM had left, which is why I took over, then we lost another player, then everyone almost died....too hard to keep going after all that).
I agree with those who say they want to see more of Irrisen. My party is done with Book 1. I changed the location of Heldren to the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, at the west end of the Grungir forest. I added a lot of fey elements to the story line, the Grungir being a place where the veil between the First World and Golarion is thin.
I like Books 1, 2, and 5 the best. Not thrilled with 3, but I can use a lot from it. Book 4 will be completely re-done. Haven't looked at Book 6 enough to make an opinion.
I'm adding in a lot of First World and fey material, and although I like Iobaria, I'm not going to have the party go to Triaxis. I'll be doing a massive re-write of Book 4 to send the party to the First World with some ties to Irrisen.
I like the idea of Elvanna workign more closely with Rasputin... I think I might try to bring some 20th century Russia into Whitethrone during Book 2. I'm not sure what... I don't know if I want to introduce a lot of guns, but maybe one or two "specialists" with guns and Russian appearance. It kind of sets the stage for Book 5 ahead of time.
Yeah. Like I said, your mileage may vary. I don't like Paizo's power scale, so I use a different one.
And that's totally fine, I just wanted to point out the discrepancy with Paizo's official material.
If I ever GM Reign of Winter, I would run books 1 & 2 pretty much as written. Once the group acquire the Dancing Hut, I would jump straight to book 5. The only redeeming feature in books 3 & 4 is the fight against the frost giants at the start of book 3. After defeating Rasputin, I would have the Dancing Hut return the party to Golarion and run a home-brew finale wherein the heroes lay siege to Whitethrone and storm Elvana’s (?) castle for the big showdown.
This will be easy enough, since I’ll likely be running the AP using Savage Worlds or another game system. I appreciate that if you’re using Pathfinder, it’ll be a lot of hard work adjusting the opposition levels to reflect you’ve skipped two books worth of content/experience/treasure.
i like all the books pretty good, the weather rules for book1 are hilarious (not sure how many Paizo employees grew up around or in wintery areas but probably not many:)
i really like the story for all 6 books, tho i will use remoh's idea above especially since my 2 kids are playing brother/sister witch hunters hot on the trail of a witch that abducted their younger sister
Yeah. Five foot viewing for a blizzard? Riiiight. Even when you're driving 30 miles an hour into headwinds during a blizzard you can still see a little bit in front of you.
For that matter, fog isn't so absolutely thick at all times that you can only see your hand in front of your face. Unless it's magic fog I guess.
Though I did decide winter cold would turn a Fog Cloud spell into fresh snow within 5 rounds.
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its the still visible trail that sticks out to me, after being in charge of a shoveling crew the last 11 years im fairly familiar with snow and wind and cold. and with the amount of snow that would be needed to reflect the penalties and such would obscure the trail and all footprints, bodies, etc would fall within hours. My daughter has a ranger archer so the trail wont be a problem and her 20 dex will help with the wind penalty i probably will ignore the obscurement outside of 30 feet and play loose with the environment so its challenging but not frustrating (we've had a hard cold winter so im not sure how much in game they can handle)
That's why I had Rokhar recruited to escort the PCs to the Somir Valley and the Winter Portal. I figured the path to the Lodge was still fairly clear and enough people went through that it would not clear up even after a day passed. But once you go over the bridge? It should be impossible to follow the path. Not with constant snowfall.
Well this thread has certainly discouraged me from running Reign of Winter, not gonna lie. I'm going to start up a game of it this Saturday with only a gunslinger, a cleric, and a samurai. All three of the players are new to Pathfinder (but not new to roleplaying in general) AND I have no idea how to integrate these players into the setting beyond the most cliche of all cliches.
Damn.
Oh, don't get me wrong. There are some flaws with the game. But the AP is a huge amount of fun! :) It has reinvigorated my campaign (which had been starting into Night Below after some initial wandering using Dungeon Magazine issues). It's just that you have to be careful with some possible flaws.
First and foremost, I'd suggest using climate as a setting... but not to overuse the weather. Have the snow having already fallen and thus it causes problems with movement but not with visibility. You can add snow squalls for thematic and atmospheric aspects but overdoing it for new players might be a problem.
Second... if you only have three players, allow them a 25-point build.
Third, be prepared to fudge rolls (and definitely play certain characters with the tactics given in the AP). Rokhar can be lethal to 1st level characters (which is why it's probably good to use a couple random encounters so they'll be 2nd level reaching the Lodge) if used effectively. Likewise with other encounters.
Oh, don't get me wrong. There are some flaws with the game. But the AP is a huge amount of fun! :) It has reinvigorated my campaign (which had been starting into Night Below after some initial wandering using Dungeon Magazine issues). It's just that you have to be careful with some possible flaws.
First and foremost, I'd suggest using climate as a setting... but not to overuse the weather. Have the snow having already fallen and thus it causes problems with movement but not with visibility. You can add snow squalls for thematic and atmospheric aspects but overdoing it for new players might be a problem.
Second... if you only have three players, allow them a 25-point build.
Third, be prepared to fudge rolls (and definitely play certain characters with the tactics given in the AP). Rokhar can be lethal to 1st level characters (which is why it's probably good to use a couple random encounters so they'll be 2nd level reaching the Lodge) if used effectively. Likewise with other encounters.
Yeah, I have no qualms about fudging rolls. But the problem with them doing a 25 point buy:
1) one player is very adamant about rolling his stats randomly and will not use point buy under any circumstances, ever;
2) We do plan on having a fourth player at some point, hopefully ASAP
Thanks for the heads up on Rokhar! Yeah, I'll probably have them do some "banding together " event before the adventure even starts, both to get them familiar with Pathfinder and to give them a boost in XP.
One thing I did with Rokhar was replace one level of cleric with one level of rogue. It makes sense given the character history and background, explains why he needs scrolls to animate dead, and reduces his channel energy to 1d6.
Rolling stats can be a good thing, btw. My RoW campaign has rolled stats. Most of the characters range from a 34-36 point build. The last scored the jackpot and has what would be a 54-point build (and then didn't optimize her stats so at level 5 her highest stat is an 18, and uses the blowgun as her preferred weapon of choice - and went with rogue). They still find it difficult.
I did a point build cost to determine how many points a +2, +3, or +4 to every stat for a "15-point build" equivalent would be, btw. (It's 37, 52, and 78 points, assuming a 15/14/13/12/10/8 build.) So if you notice most of your players have what would be 35-point characters, you could just add +2 to all stats of every encounter to balance it. Assuming you even need to - some of the encounters are tough even without augmenting them.
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Well, I finally got an idea today on how to integrate Rasputin Must Die! into a homebrewn Taldor campaign, so I guess outside of module five, RoW will not be run by me. But, hey, still RMD! with some modifications to the storyline. :)
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Magnuskn, when you get it all outlined, please post the results in my Alternative Overlays for Rasputin Must Die thread!
I'll do that, although it will still take quite a while, the idea just came into my head yesterday when I was returning from my weekly RotRL game (where I can be a player, yay! :D)
BTW, I hope you get to write another AP module again, soon. One of the high level Iron Gods modules sounds right up your alley. And that Armies of Golarion is moving to be a reality rather sooner than later. :)
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The "Which Evil are we heroically fighting for?" issue is what led me to begin adapting the adventure for mythic adventuring.
It should be clear by the time the party finishes Book 2 that Baba Yaga is hardly better than Elvanna. At this point, however, they still need the old bag to stop Eternal Winter. As they progress through the story, they will continue to add to their mythic-ness until the final adventure, where they'll end up at 17th level with 6 tiers. They're still not ready to put Baba Yaga down (perhaps), but it's certainly on their radar. At that point, I let them decide if they want to pursue the subsequent mythic trials to try and free Irrisen once and for all, or if they're ready to go back to being a 1st-level party in a new campaign.
Yeah. Like I said, your mileage may vary. I don't like Paizo's power scale, so I use a different one.And that's totally fine, I just wanted to point out the discrepancy with Paizo's official material.
It makes me happy 'cause Paizo can't seem to actually stat their official material in a way that doesn't result in me getting really disconnected.
Like, there are instances of deities/demigods getting thrashed by dudes like Tar Baphon the lich, and you're effectively Jesus at 9th level. By 17th level a cleric can just raise their hands and stop a comet from harming a city directly or indirectly with miracle. I mean, for all intents and purposes 17th+ level PCs are casually doing things that people in reality would define as godlike and have been doing so for ages.
It's easier for me to believe I guess, when beings of godlike power are treated as beings of godlike power. If a solar was to appear in the world as we know it, all the humans in the world banding together couldn't kill it and it would likely be the closest thing to a god anyone has ever seen or heard of save for it being able to create a world (and technically even then it can do so if it has the right feats).
A CR 30 encounter is worth basically 32 pit fiends (not counting their ability to summon more devils). All in all either the thing is going to be to goofy powerful to avoid shaking my immersion by comparison to the setting, or it's going to be overly inflated and drastically underwhelming for its relative power scale.
But like Aratrok said, YMMV. :P
Oh, don't make the mistake of assuming that I am fine with mythic power levels. I find them absurd and am not really looking forward to GM'ing the later fights in WotR. As I said, I was just pointing out what the official stance on things is.
BTW, you got any ETA on your fourth post on encounter design for your blog? Really looking forward to it. :)
Part of the disconnect could be from various mythologies displaying radically different power levels.
The Greek and Norse pantheons have a relatively low level, especially the Norse pantheon. Odin and Loki (and Loki's children) are practically the only members of the pantheon that amount to being more than just people with nice magic items. You could probably stat Thor and others as level 11 or lower.
The Greek gods by and large are just bullies, and again most could be statted out in the L7 to 11 range - significantly stronger than ordinary humans, but not that amazing. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades are only ones who really exist on a more "godly" scale.
Once you start going further east, you hit the other end of the scale - 32 pit fiends would not be enough to stop Sun Wukong, the Great Sage Equaling Heaven. Sun Wukong could take on the entire Norse Pantheon and the entire Greek Pantheon at once and beat them. He'd probably feel bad about it, since most of them aren't strong enough to have any business challenging him. Many of the figures of Chinese mythology, mortal and god alike, are depicted as staggeringly powerful.
Such as the mortal bowman who killed four of the five suns, because all five had decided to shine on the land at once instead of taking turns.
Man, it's been too long since I've read those stories.
I suspect that Sumerian, Indian and Japanese mythology is full of similarly over-the-top events.
Actually, you are diminishing the Western deities because of D&D stats for monsters they face. Norse frost giants are NOT the frost giants in AD&D or Pathfinder. They are, for the weakest of them, CR20 encounters with intense strength and the ability to cause untold damage. And they have been faced down by the Nordic gods - both bands, seeing that it was two pantheons that merged before Christianity overtook them in turn. And critters like the Hydra or the like? We're talking about monsters that ordinary mortals could not defeat. A phalanx of Greek soldiers would die fighting the Hydra and not scratch it.
What adventurers in AD&D and Pathfinder fight are the diminished cast-off spawn of those first monsters. And consider monsters like Black Magga - when PCs face her in Runelords, she is a shadow of what she once was. And yet she's a CR17 monster.
No doubt if the Eastern monsters were all put in AD&D and Pathfinder statistics much as the hydra and other Western myths were, early on, then the Eastern deities would seem much less powerful in comparison. And don't forget: Thor killed a serpent that was so large it encircled the entirety of Midgard (Earth). And he managed nine steps after being poisoned by that before succumbing and dying. Yet you diminish him as an 11th level barbarian with a nice magic item. Right.
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What Tangent101 said. The Norse Gods are staggeringly powerful in context. Thor drank enough water from the ocean to lower the worldwide ocean level several feet, and once caught Jormungandr (the aforementioned serpent who circled the world) while fishing and almost pulled him in, for example. The Greek Gods likewise.
You make good points. My apologies.
Yeah, a solar couldn't successfully fish Jormungandr out of the ocean. I now recall that Thor had to throw Jormungandr back becuase he'd almost pulled its tail out of its mouth while reeling it in.
I think the real issue is varying expectations among the source material.
Count me among the Aragorn was a 5th level character camp; there's nothing particularly impressive that Aragorn, or indeed anyone in the Lord of the Rings, did. (Wow, Gandalf can light pinecones and talk to birds.)
The hydra as described in Greek myth would have eaten the entire Fellowship. But Hercules, a 16th level demigod, could solo it.
The hydra as described in Greek myth would have eaten the entire Fellowship. But Hercules, a 16th level demigod, could solo it.
Well, even Heracles couldn't solo it. Action economy. He needed a cohort to burn the neck stubs.
Aragorn a 5th level character? You're talking a man who was able to wade through a score of orcs without taking more than a few scratches. He's in all likelihood 11th level.
Gandalf was an Eldritch Knight, seeing that he was running around using the sword more often than spells. He probably was a Generalist Wizard as well, and didn't have the spell slots to just burn off that quickly. (Also, fighting a Balrog suggests some hidden power there. He did solo that encounter.)
giving literary characters PRPG levels and classes is like putting lipstick on a pig, even IF you can get the lipstick on the pig, not everybody will like how it looks:)
Aragorn a 5th level character? You're talking a man who was able to wade through a score of orcs without taking more than a few scratches. He's in all likelihood 11th level.
You didn't actually read the article, did you?
I'm running, here's how its playing out (here be spoilers ahead)
1) 2.5 out of 5: The setting and encounters are nice, especially if you have a veteran group. This is one of the toughest 1st level adventure modules. The hook and story aren't very good, and the path through the woods doesn't make a whole lot of sense. My players left it and went all over the damn place, plus the tracks get covered up by snow.
2) 4 out of 5: Everyone had a good time here, book really made sense, players thought up things that were included in the module, and some that weren't that were easily incorporated. Bard loved the romance angle. Encounters were challenging and varied enough.
3) 2 out of 5: This was a real snoozer for my group. They liked the hut part fairly well, but everything outside was drab and confusing. The way the dungeon is set up leads to a lot of shifting things around and hand waving for it to make sense, the party doesn't get much in the way of clues of whats going on. The warden comes off as an enemy right away, only the most tolerant of parties won't attack her as written. Her lover they will most likely free making her attack them. You've got to really scramble to have this not just turn into a straight kill-fest with no story.
4) 4.5 out of 5: This one I wasn't expecting much from, yet I had a blast and my players had a friggin riot. The whole alien world part and helping the dragons out, as well as finally having a good "here are bad guys, here are good guys" part comes as a breath of fresh air after module 3 was so muddy. Plus you get to slay a dragon, who doesn't love dem sum dragon slaying? I was surprised how well it went over.
5) Incomplete: From the DM's point of view, this is great if its what you're after. To be frank I selected this module after my friends vote came up split between reign of winter and shattered star just so I could run this module. we'll see how they react to the back half of the module coming up. I'm scared Rasputin will wipe the floor with them, so I'm going to let them take 15th before the fight. Rasputin is scary scary scary.
6) Who knows?
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Aragorn a 5th level character? You're talking a man who was able to wade through a score of orcs without taking more than a few scratches. He's in all likelihood 11th level.You didn't actually read the article, did you?
Or perhaps he disagreed with it.
I've read it and find it quite unconvincing.
The level of Aragorn also depends a lot on "which Aragorn?". The movie version is considerably more powerful than the book version. Although even the book version is a lot higher than a 5th level character is in Golarion.
I will say that the back-to-back adventures of the Howlings and the Clock Tower in book two have supplied us with some kickass adventures. Book two is wonderful.