Book 3 Pit falls


Wrath of the Righteous


I'm about to start running book 3. Any pitfalls I should be aware about?

Weak encounters to buff (I have a pretty optimized party)?
Encounters that might trigger a TPK?

Any boring sections I should skip :)


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Most of the beginning encounters are pretty weak. A lot of CR 10 fights when the PCs are only doing one fight per day.

The first half of the book also deals with downtime stuff (rebuilding Drezen) and exploration, both of which can be boring. But you know your party best for that.

Just remember that you pretty much control the pace of book three. Most of the events are started by dreams or by NPCs so you can foreshadow or steer the group as needed.


I plan on skipping the downtime system stuff and the city building. I have no time to learn the sub systems. I skipped the army battles in the last book as well.

The mystic shadow demon from book two nearly wiped out my party. 32 rounds of combat and being chased nearly out of the citidal. It was a tough fight.

I looked at some of the creatures and their to hit bonuses are shooting much higher. My players all have AC in the high 20's to low 30's.

I'm going to reread the AP to prepare for our next sessions, but I'm wondering if anyone has experienced something that needs to be changed significantly up or down in power.

I will not do the one encounter per day.. That is just plain silly to teach your players to mythic nova each time...


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Yeah, well. The problem is that the encounter locations are strewn all over the area the party is supposed to explore. Unless you want the party to be teleported to locations without their consent, they set much of the pace of the module.

Scarab Sages

No, let your players learn their own resource management. Scorpion's stats for the book 3 mobs are good absorbers of mythic power anyways, so your PCs nova.

And then comes the end of book 3/into book 4 and they've got bad habits unless they were smart.

But seriously, if you want to do more than one encounter per day in the vast majority of book 3, you're going to be throwing a LOT of random encounters at your players.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Ha. Even though Magnus and I said opposite things I think they are both true. When you introduce something to them, then the PCs will sit the pace. So unless you set up random monsters or additional encounters there will be only one encounter per day.

I found that book 3 was where the PCs power really took off; extra actions plus extra abilities added up to easy and boring encounters. Plus many of them are CR10-11 which makes no sense for an APL 11 group.

Did you alloy your PCs to buy magic items between books? Odds are their ACs and saves will change.


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Well, book three basically is where the PC's got a ton of time and a ton of loot, so they should be able to spend their money from book two and invest the money from book three well, too.


Just looking at book 3, haven't run it yet but I have already reworked several encounters.

Encounter:

The encounter with the Barbarians. Poor choice of rage powers and I noticed they leader didn't have the full allotment of rage powers for their level. Just changing up the rage power improved the Barbarians quite a bit. Still too easy of fight I suspect.

The Exchange

I turned book three into a day by day routine. we are dealing with taxes, the corpses of the armies that fought over drezen, political control of the city and the army of people that arrived just recently.

i also added some of my own twists to the game here, a series of assassins from the npc codex lead by a character of my own creation.

and the psychosis wrought paladin that threw radiance in the sewer and had to fight a AvP Ziggurat of fleshwarps to get it back.


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Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

You might want to think about using the random encounter table from the Worldwound book instead of Book 3. Instead of Average CR 10-11, it's CR 13-14, with possibility of encountering CR 16 Shemhazian, which even these character should think twice before attacking.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

My group just started book 3, also. The downtime subgame was not well-received. In the end they just ended up doing 3-4 weeks of crafting and contributing healing, money and a redeemed Soulshear to get the Recovery Points.

I have noticed a big spike in their power as Level9/Tier3. Previously, fights have been fairly close with 2 character deaths and single digit/negative hitpoints for several characters.

I had been maximizing hitpoints amd/or adding the advanced template to monsters to increase challenge, but that did not hold up well for the few encounters they have had so far.


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The problem most likely is that they only have one or two encounters per day on most of the set-pieces. Try using Scorpion_mdj's upgrades.

Of course it could also be that tier three abilities make a lot difference, as does getting another mythic feat. Also, by now they should have had time to craft and buy gear, giving them another power boost over the frenzied pace of the first two books.


magnuskn wrote:

The problem most likely is that they only have one or two encounters per day on most of the set-pieces. Try using Scorpion_mdj's upgrades.

Of course it could also be that tier three abilities make a lot difference, as does getting another mythic feat. Also, by now they should have had time to craft and buy gear, giving them another power boost over the frenzied pace of the first two books.

you can always throw more then one or 2 encounters at them in a day, thats what encounter tables are for after all. this complaint annoys me so very much to be honest, i hear it all with Kingmaker too.

Scarab Sages

The problem is captain, that if you consistantly throw four to five encounters at the players it drags out game time as well. And makes no sense from a random encounter perspective most of the time. "How are all these things tracking us down? How are they not all killing each other as well!?"


Lochar wrote:
The problem is captain, that if you consistantly throw four to five encounters at the players it drags out game time as well. And makes no sense from a random encounter perspective most of the time. "How are all these things tracking us down? How are they not all killing each other as well!?"

I can see the game time perspective the other part doesn't make sense to me as its always been easy for me to integrate random encounters into the game (i've been using them extensively for a long, long time)


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Another problem is that random encounters don't add anything to the story. They usually are just there to soak up time, there should be a better answer.


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Seannoss wrote:
Another problem is that random encounters don't add anything to the story. They usually are just there to soak up time, there should be a better answer.

This. I don't want to add another two months of sessions just for encounters which are completely non-relevant to the story. Also, the AP's should be frankly written better, so that we GM's don't have to cover for the writers shortcomings as an encounter designer. Seriously. :-/


magnuskn wrote:
Seannoss wrote:
Another problem is that random encounters don't add anything to the story. They usually are just there to soak up time, there should be a better answer.
This. I don't want to add another two months of sessions just for encounters which are completely non-relevant to the story. Also, the AP's should be frankly written better, so that we GM's don't have to cover for the writers shortcomings as an encounter designer. Seriously. :-/

okay, write an adventure then! if its so easy and they are so bad then why get them?


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captain yesterday wrote:
okay, write an adventure then! if its so easy and they are so bad then why get them?

I am writing my next campaign, because I am getting tired of a lot of the AP formats downfalls. If I can write a better story or make all encounters challenging is rather another question, given how I am an amateur writer and encounter designer.

But that doesn't change that professional writers should know better than to design an adventure which allows player characters to serially nova encounters. Or if the nature of the adventure is as such that "few encounters per day" absolutely has to be the norm, they should design the encounters in a way which expects player characters to expend most of their resources in a single fight and builds the opposition in a way which still makes those kind of fights challenging.

Grand Lodge

Magnus, I would be interested to see your writing. What do you have so far?


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James Hebert wrote:
Magnus, I would be interested to see your writing. What do you have so far?

Not really very much. Only a very rough campaign outline. I am adamant on integrating Rasputin Must Die! from Reign of Winter into an urban campaign set in Oppara in Taldor and that has taken up most of my thought processes dedicated to this (still very far off) campaign for the last month and a half. By now I think I got the story twist necessary for it worked out and have by now thought up a rough structure on how to get from point A to Z.

So until I got anything worth looking it, it'll be a while.

Grand Lodge

Well good luck. I'd be interested to see how a campaign designed for experienced players turns out.


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With a lot less "fight through this giant building from room to room" action and a lot more roleplaying challenges. And then Rasputin Must Die! and after that more roleplaying+/actual fighting- . :p


thanks everyone for their suggestions...

I am going to play around with the stat blocks provided on the other thread... probably find a way to rework the hex searching.. I do not like that.

We only play twice a month and we are all old guys... our memories do not work well with sandbox/hunt and peck gaming. I will reworked section two as a more cohesive rail that gives direction to lead into book 4.

Your suggestions are well received.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Then yes, I would present all the events in a way that makes sense to you and your players and worry less about variables. It will also make things easier on you.
I think the only thing the exploration is useful for is if you want to build upon the alien feeling of the worldwound and its connection to the abyss.


The hex exploration is by far the weakest part of the adventure. I would strongly consider dropping it if I were to play it again. NPC questgivers do the required job (getting you out into the world) far better than hex exploration.


I'd have them travel alot more in the Worldwound; not so much exploring hexes, but getting a bit further away from the Drezen area. "The Worldwound" campaign book just has so many wonderfully wicked locations, and I want to use more of them, without really having looked into the specifics yet.
One plan is to have Xanthir have four lieutenants who must be defeated before his Sanctum can be found (or entered), and these would probably be in a mini-dungeon in some form, in an area that just oozes with atmosphere (literally...).


So.. I reviewed the entire book today (work was slow today). Part 2 is pretty solid with a lot of encounters with flavor. I am not a fan of the hex exploration, but that is easily changed to quest giving and teleportation to and from.

Part 3 is a simple "bring out your best dice because today is combat all day long". My players like that level of intensity.

Part 4 is a pretty long slog of room after room, similar to when they were taking control of Drezen. My players only cleared about half before attacking Staunton. I had the rest of the army clear the other rooms while the creatures fled.

Are we expecting the players to go through every room, somehow level up before they walk into the BBEG's room and then fight without a break?

If this was my base, I would find a way to destroy these pests with a controlled assault... instead of just watching them (scry) kill one baddie after another before they came to my room. I mean, we are talking about potentially 18 rooms to explore before Mr. Squiggly gets to lay a smack down.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

As a note for the Sanctum many of the enemies there want to betray and eliminate competition. So results may vary if your PCs are chatty.


Ah, lol Yes, I forgot about that part. :)


I plan on making Xanthir a very mobil foe, maybe with some other wormy minions with him:)

Grand Lodge

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I was planning the opposite for Xany. He's going to have his room all set up to take care of those meddling kids. The doors are going to be rigged to seal themselves on command to keep the party contained first off. Going to go with some black tentacles, and the cloud kill, and I'm going to uplift Vortex of Teeth from 3.5 (fills an area with force based piranha that do damage every round) to make the room a blender of death, with Xany floating serenely above it all, casually tossing doom and destruction down upon the hapless party. Since he get's to choose the location of the fight, he's going to shape it to his favor. Maybe drop people into hungry pits and seal the mouth of them? mythic magic missiles for stragglers. Fireballs because why not? Maybe he'll even summon something! It's gonna be fun!!

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