Prep for Curse of the Riven Sky

[Rycaut]

So I am planning on running Curse of the Riven Sky for some players in the Bay Area (if you are interested we may have a few more slots - going to probably try to run it in one or two extended sessions - likely on a weekend either in SF or near Palo Alto).

The party will probably be mostly 11th level characters - so clearly as a GM I'll have to be very well prepared as nearly literally anything can happen...

A few semi-spoiler questions:

1) how long have other GM's runs of this module taken? Looking over it there are a number of encounters that seem like they could take a long time to resolve (especially the ones where similar events may happen at semi-random intervals) It also seems like some party builds may bypass many encounters initially - but could well trigger far longer and larger encounters in the end.

2) How should a PFS judge handle outright errors in the published stats or likely errors in the maps (scale on one map is almost certainly wrong as literally the monsters as depicted won't fit into the areas they are placed at the given scale)? It seems like many of the stat blocks have errors.

A few specific examples:

The Cloud giant is described as having spent a lot of time recently brewing potions and offers to make potions for the PCs however he lacks the Brew Potion feat. One of the main Hill Giant leaders has too low of an AC (her natural armor is listed incorrectly and too high of a Will save) and I think there are a few others.

3) The main plot hook of the module is getting a giant mage to help the PCs use a magical book which needs a ritual to use it. However this book is referred to differently in two parts of the module and is missing entirely from the Chronicle Sheet - it seems like it would have been a fantastic treasure for the PC's. More crucially how would PFS handle if the PC's use an item in the module that gives them a permanent bonus (the book is either a Manual of Gainful Exercise +2 or a "manual of the titans" (which isn't further described anywhere). In a home game I would likely rule that either the PC's have one book each or that the special ritual means that every PC gets the benefits of the book - but in PFS play my hands are far more tied)

What issues have other GMs had with running this module?

[redward]

I ran this for PFS last year. I can't remember how long it took exactly, but I managed to keep it around 4 - 5 hours. Of course, they were also a fairly optimized party that ran roughshod over all of the combat encounters.

First, we did the the intro stuff by play-by-post to save time for the in-person session. Basically everything up to the actual approach to the castle. This included a small intro where Aram Zey gave them the mission.

Since the book wasn't on the chronicle, their mission was to get the ritual performed so that the Society could have access to it. Since the exact nature of the book isn't relevant to the PCs or the scenario, I never identified its mechanical function:

Aram Zey wrote:

"A certain tome, the Book of the Titan, has come into the hands of the Society. It is quite a powerful artifact, but it requires a very specific and complex ritual to unlock its power. Unfortunately, this ritual must be performed with the help of a wizard with giant blood.

"We know of one such wizard, a cloud giant named Zoarth. He resides in a castle on top of a high peak in the Kodar Mountains, deep in the Land of the Linnorm Kings.

"You are to go to him and ask for his help. Once you secure his cooperation, use this (he hands you an amulet) to contact me and I will bring the Book of the Titan so that he can perform the ritual.

"I have secured travel for you to the Kodar Mountains. It will get you as far as the base. You'll have to work your way up to the tip. You leave next week."

If you use Hero Lab, there's a portfolio containing all the encounters at the d20pfsrd community repository. I think there may have been some errors in there, though (or maybe they just corrected the errors you identified; it's been a while).

When I ran it, the Crag Linnorm was the only thing that really proved a viable threat. Even Verakas was a trivial encounter due to Dazing spells from the party Wizard.

[Rycaut]

Based on my reading of the module I'm quite surprised about it only taking 4-5 hours - in my past experience high level modules have rarely taken less than 12 hours and in most cases more like 15-16 hours - even with fairly optimized characters.

(clearly there may be a big play style difference between how I run/play and how other people and groups do).

As a player - and as a GM - for me part of the appeal of a module over a scenario is this very length - the chance to go more into characters, to have more encounters, to be challenged and to exercise aspects of the game and our characters that more typical PFS scenarios don't generally have the scope to do. Whether this is spending an hour in pure roleplay or multiple encounters set on a map nearly 200+ feet across modules at their best offer a chance for a longer story.

If you did only take 4-5 hours I'm curious how quick were your combats - did your players bypass many encounters? Or did they simply shutdown a lot of the combats via optimized casters? Dazing metamagic is indeed potent - but should only be lasting a handful of rounds so would have to be paired with a lot of damage and a party able to maneuver into position to deal that damage quite quickly (while avoiding being hit dazing spells themselves. And as a +3 metamagic, even with some of the optimizer's tricks even a 10th or 11th level wizard won't have a lot of dazing spells in a given day (a sorcerer may have a few more spells - but then each casting would be a full round in most cases)

[redward]

They had a Barbarian, an archer, and a fighter throwing out massive damage. They also had two wizards specialized in conjuration (one with the aforementioned dazing spells) and a life oracle keeping everyone alive.

So a six-person highly optimized party. It may have been longer than 5 hours (as I said, it was some time ago) but it was definitely less than 8. Combats were indeed quick, and they strung a few of them together. I also believe they were able to bypass one or more.

I also enjoy the extended room to breathe in a module vs that of a scenario. For a great example of that, read SammyT's writeup of his run of Academy of Secrets. I was in that party, and it was hands down one of my favorite gaming experiences.

In this case, we were trying to work through some very tight schedules to fill up a party for Eyes of the Ten, so the whole thing was a bit rushed.

If nothing else, I highly recommend starting out via PbP. It gives players time to RP and for the GM to fill out the world. Once you hit the table (or VTT) you've got a strong shared experience that will inform the rest of the adventure and encourage further RP.

[David Haller]

I ran Curse of the Riven Sky in about 10-12 hours.

It is VERY combat intensive (potentially), and I had every statblock ready to go in Hero Lab (with hard copy backups), had minis counted out and ready, and in general was "ready to rock and roll" - I wanted it to be very fast-paced, unrelenting, and brutal (I was running a table of very experienced powergamers); it was also obvious that there was no way to run it in a day without editing. The many large combat were handled very, very efficiently.

I removed the extraneous satyr/dryad encounter entirely, and handled the blob invasion of the city via cinematic handwaving; the hill giant camp encounter, fortunately, played out diplomatically, so that was a matter of roleplaying (which can be more controllable timewise).

I think we did break for meals (rather than gorging at the game table), which is always advisable for long modules - I think the "lost time" is more than regained by refreshed, alert players.

Most key: everyone knew what they were doing. These were good, experienced players, and they paid attention to the table and were ready to go as soon as their turn came up. I had decided at the outset that I wanted the scenario to be brutal, so I pretty much poured the whole box of large minis on the table and rolled initiative as soon as they say down - blast had by all.

One encounter has a particularly variable outcome: the linnorm. Naturally - because I was going for *brutal* - they weren't going to escape it. They had some very useful countermeasures against flying creatures, however, and it actually was one of the less intense encounters - against a certain party, it could play out very long (and nasty and deadly), though. It *is* also easily avoided, and a GM tight on time could simply decide the party goes unnoticed.

So really, it comes down to three major plot points: protecting the cloud giant initially, dealing with the hill giant chief and his adviser, and the resolution in the cloud castle, with investigative links between them. If I ever run it again, I'll try to do so in a two-day run, so that the "center" of the scenario can play out more.

It's very fun, though!

[Rycaut]

I don't think I'll be dropping any of the encounters - especially not the satyr one as I think that's one of the more fun RP heaving opportunities in the module - and a good break in the action that may otherwise be fairly heavy combatwise.

I do, however, think I'll look very carefully at the stats and maps - a few of them see to have outright math errors (incorrect and too low AC for a few monsters) and in another case the map as written simply doesn't accommodate the monsters given their sizes. (5' squares that probably should have been 10' squares to make far more sense).

Mechanically I'm a bit worried about how I will draw out all of the maps - if I can find a friend with the right printers I'll try printing them out ahead of time as that would make the whole adventure go far more smoothly. There are a also a bit of complex 3D encounters that I think could either go very well (and be exceptionally challenging) or not depending on both the PC's actions and how I run the 3d elements).

I'm really looking forward to the Linnorm - which is actually an opportunity I think to break out some really interesting wilderness maps and hold a very large scale combat. Could be fairly brutal.

I've also found in the past that modules without specified monster locations for given encounters can be highly variable depending on how a GM places the enemies and how far apart the pcs and enemies are when you role initiative. If you wait until everyone is in closing distance (and if you leave enemies in "fireball" formation combats can especially at high levels end quickly. But if you start at a greater distance and let both sides let loose with their long range abilities (rock throwing for giants that in many cases has a range increment of 120', fireball etc for pcs) then combats can be far more tactical and complex. For a bunch of giant encounters I'm a bit reluctant to just start them all on small scale maps.

(in the module as well there are a bunch of encounters that have the potential to run into each other and in many cases be triggered simultaneously - which I think even with relatively lower CR monsters will boost the difficulty even for an optimized party - but of course with lots of monsters the time of a given round can if you aren't careful stretch out.

[David Haller]

The encounter scale is so large that it frankly defies any conventional table size, at least in several cases.

The linnorm encounter, for example: the linnorm has no reason to confine itself to "a map". It would essentially just pick up one PC at a time, take him a mile away, kill him, then find the PCs again to rinse and repeat. It didn't quite work out that way, but we still had to basically abstract the scale (one idea is to use sets of d10s to track the x, y, and z coordinates of the PCs relative to some origin, and denote relative location on a "not to scale" mat).

As for running the module uncut: I'd definitely allot two days, especially if one wants to savor the roleplaying. I hope to do such a run eventually!

(The aforementioned 5 hour run is incomprehensible to me - even if each encounter ended in the surprise round, I'd expect it to run longer!)

[TriOmegaZero]

I grabbed this out of my library to get a player leveled for Eyes of the Ten and didn't expect much from it. After 12 hours over two sessions, I am pleasantly surprised with how it turned out.

Stats were a minor problem. Do your prep beforehand and put things together, as I had to add templates on the fly in HeroLab and look up PRD entries for nearly everything.

There are a lot of giant fights. The encounters are tightly themed and might get a little monotonous. Expect there to be a lot of damage inflicted on the party but rarely all at once. The swinginess of the dice will play a part.

Don't skip the cover encounter. Gelatinous cubes won't seriously threaten an APL 10 party, but we had fun watching everyone make the saves and get bumper car'd around the map.

I cut a number of encounters due to repetitiveness, and ended up killing an animal companion three times and the ranger once. (Greatsword power attacks are lethal.) Overall an average adventure that played better than I expected.

[Dragios]

I'm running this for a group who wants to get their eyes of their 10 pcs up there, just like you Steve. I've already started the prep and I'm going to use Comcast for the maps. That should help with the large encounters. My question is this:

Spoiler:

Are the Pale Ones evil? It doesn't say and because my PCs will use Prot from Evil if possession is involved, I'd like to make sure.

[TriOmegaZero]

As they are vengeance obsessed spirits and likely undead, as well as her alignment being evil, her possession ability should probably be counted as from an evil source when referenced by spells and other effects.