| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Antipaladin: Yes.
General advice from playing in it (we're in book 4 now): Encourage your casters to get Spell Penetration/Greater, and maybe even Piercing Spell above all else before book 3 at the latest if they plan on using any offensive spells ever.
Everybody and their grandmother has spell resistance after that level, often with a Globe of Invulnerability effect tacked on to boot, since Celestials are on the whole MUCH tougher than their Fiendish counterparts.
They have better saves and higher SR and other defenses to boot, so they're ridiculously frustrating for any sort of offensive caster (like a blaster, especially).
Oh, and make sure everybody is fanatically devoted to Asmodeus. Like, 100% completely ready to follow orders no matter what the orders might be.
Because the plot of this AP makes ZERO SENSE if they aren't. Past Book 2, or maybe even earlier, you basically have no incentive whatsoever to keep following orders unless you're right on with the cause or are in some other way completely incapable of being able to go your own way.
And make sure your players are fine with classic fantasy tropes being reversed in groan inducing ways.
[spoilers for Book 4] It took me a little bit to realize this, but your main goal in book 4 is to RESCUE a dragon and KILL a princess. I facepalmed.[/spoiler]
Other than that the AP is super fun, just a bit frustrating at times if you're playing a primary caster who isn't going the optimal route of "Buff and summon fo' dayzzzz".
This campaign has a lot of stated goals that are X, Your players are then challenged on how to do so. It also stymied a group that was more used to railroading. My second group did amazingly well.
On player balance, I can not stress enough that they need to talk about what they are playing and compliment each other. They will be wanted for much of the campaign with little help, so having someone to do traps, heal, make knowledge checks, etc etc is vitally important.
Also try to get someone to be a cleric/anti-paladin/etc of asmodeus to help motivate the group to follow at times. I did use liberal use off the contract in book one to bring unease to any talk dissension. Fiendish Vessel (Cleric) is utterly amazing for this AP with the ability to heal evil and harm good regardless if positive or negative energy is normally used to heal.
The group I ran that finished this was a Fiendish Vessel of asmodeus, Anti-paladin of asmodeus, Rogue 1/Wizard X that did god wizard role, last but not even close to least was a Juju oracle undead making to the absurd.
They forced through very stealth objectives and secretly did some that were supposed to be upfront war, stay nimble my friend as they can really throw you for a loop. On the vampire or lich, I can only suggest they all do it, or none as it brings disadvantages to when or where they can be, if it is not every one it can cause strife.
Latter in the AP combat can really slow down with all their friends, be prepared or story the mass combats.
Make sure that at least one party member has the capability to heal the other players. Trust me on that one.
Make sure that at least one party member has the capability to heal the other players. Trust me on that one.
That should go for every group, and without saying should it not?
Don't let anyone play a Souleater with Crafting Feats unless you're ok with your players becoming Monty Haul style over wealth due to the huge amount of downtime available in book 2.
Oh, and make sure everybody is fanatically devoted to Asmodeus. Like, 100% completely ready to follow orders no matter what the orders might be.
Because the plot of this AP makes ZERO SENSE if they aren't. Past Book 2, or maybe even earlier, you basically have no incentive whatsoever to keep following orders unless you're right on with the cause or are in some other way completely incapable of being able to go your own way.
Actually, I didn't find that to be a problem at all. None of the players were Asmodeans when I ran it, but the contracts they had to sign early in book 1 were enough to keep them in line until they were free of them. By that point, they wanted to rule the island anyway, so lack of Asmodean help just made it a little more challenging for them, but it wasn't immersion breaking.
Advice for DMing in general
Rules Disagreements: If there is a rule disagreement between you and the player, give them 1 minute to provide book passage. If they can't then go with your rule until the end of the game when you all can check.
Don't houserule things on the spot unless it's an emergency.
Example: Player takes Dervish Dance on his level up, you haven't told the players you don't want Dervish Dance. You only find out 1 session later in a combat. Don't kill his fun because you don't audit character sheets.
You tell players before Game starts that X options are banned, so they know to avoid them. That is good house ruling.
Actually, I didn't find that to be a problem at all. None of the players were Asmodeans when I ran it, but the contracts they had to sign early in book 1 were enough to keep them in line until they were free of them. By that point, they wanted to rule the island anyway, so lack of Asmodean help just made it a little more challenging for them, but it wasn't immersion breaking.
The problem here is there's a good long stretch between "Free of contract" and "Have room to act on your own agency".
Your characters basically have no reason to, unless they're loyal to Asmodeus:
More to the point, if you're not loyal to Asmodeus, you have zero reason to want the Mitrans dead in the first place...after all, Asmodeus' entire reason for wanting them exterminated is because they drove his worship from the island to begin with.
The entire AP is basically one big, long revenge plot Asmodeus cooked up to get back at Mitra. If your character has no interest in the outcome of that squabble, he has no reason to participate.
The Player's guide actually explicitely told me to make a character who hates the country, Mitra, ect.
So I made a backstory that made me have plenty of reasons to hate Mitra.
Make sure that at least one party member has the capability to heal the other players. Trust me on that one.That should go for every group, and without saying should it not?
Yes, but doubly so for this one.
The entire AP is basically one big, long revenge plot Asmodeus cooked up to get back at Mitra. If your character has no interest in the outcome of that squabble, he has no reason to participate.
That is true, but I simply fixed it by giving my PCs a reason to hate the Mitrans outside of the revenge plot. That way the revenge plot becomes Thorn's (and Asmodeus's revenge by proxy) and the PC's revenge. Thorn's rules are fine for now, while they have no power to stop him. In time though, they plan to find loopholes in their contract and take him out, as well as the Mitrans. Which is just fine with me.
Eh. Maybe it's because I'm used to playing Evil characters in standard, usually Good aligned campaigns, but I need my guy to have a motivation beyond "For teh Evulz" and Way of the Wicked doesn't do a great job of providing that unless you go "Hail Hydra Asmodeus!" before doing whatever.
There is honestly no benefit for the characters in this AP as individuals. You sign a contract binding yourself to Asmodeus, to carry out his will.
For anyone but a fanatic, that's a bad idea you're probably desperately trying to search for a way out of.
The Mitran government and a Preacher of Mitra, secretly a worshipper of Baphomet, destroyed my character's childhood and family and gave him plenty reason to hate Mitra and ally with anyone to see them tumble down.
I'll post my backstory when I get home.
Also our party has actually gotten friendly real quick, even without prodding from the contract.
I'm not going to read you whole post since I'm only up to Book 4.
I actually came into the campaign mid Book 2, so maybe my experience is skewed, but for the most part it seems like you have no incentive to pursue these goals unless you worship Asmodeus.
Getting the Tears to unleash a plague to kill Mitrans = Only a goal that makes sense for you to do "Because Asmodeus/Thorn wants me to". It doesn't benefit you directly in any way to kill off the entire population of this island/continent/whatever.
Likewise assaulting the Vale, and destroying all that stuff. The entire point of that is to cripple the Mitrans...which you probably don't care about at all unless you're down with the "We're doing the Asmodeus thing because Asmodeus".
The PCs themselves don't really gain anything out of it except the incidental benefits of increased power and wealth. It does nothing to further their own personal goals unless the goals are "Kill the Mitrans! For the glory of Asmodeus!".
It's a much narrower focus than most APs, is my point. The AP is fun, but a bit hard to justify without that religious core. Sure, there's some outliers like Dragoon's guy, but not everybody can have that same backstory.
Not to mention the, ehm, odd methods in some cases.
So, we're supposed to be recruiting this big badass black dragon to attack the palace and put the princess' life in danger, so daddy comes a runnin' and we can kill him.
Fine and dandy...except for the part where the dragon is a necessary step in this plan.
Why in the name of all that is unholy does a party of 4 level 13 PCs, each with a template at this point (I'm a Nosferatu Inquisitor, and we have a Graveknight Antipaladin, a Half-Fiend Arcanist, and a Shadow Creature/Lord Zen Archer), need to recruit a black dragon to sneak and/or fight our way into the palace and threaten the princess? Each of the 4 of us is the equivalent of an army of 1000 in power, and we can each get into the palace undetected in our own special way.
The only logical explanation, of course, is "Because Thorn wants you to do it this way".
No matter what the Player's guide says about character creation you will always have players who don't follow the guidelines for various reasons.
Maybe all they wanna do is mustache twirl and don't think too far ahead.
Maybe they wanna do a super grimderp character.
Maybe they have a character concept they'd been carrying around forever and they don't wanna be limited to the Player's guide.
No matter the reason chosen the Player's guide is pretty specific about what kinds of characters it wants you to play. Yes that is super rail roady and can be annoying, but at least they gave us the forewarning before we even started playing.
"This is your home. You have
lived here your entire life. And if they gave you half a
chance, you would have your revenge on all of them""must worship
a god who approves of the villainous path ahead of you.
Worshipping the lawful evil god Asmodeus is
strongly
encouraged. At the GM’s discretion it may be required
for divine classes""Of those four alignments,
lawful evil
is definitely the preferred choice. At
the Game Master’s discretion, lawful evil may be the required alignment. ""This is not the campaign for chaotic loners or free-
spirited vagabonds. Those campaigns exist in abundance
and if they are what you are looking for, perhaps you are
in the wrong place. This is a campaign about joining an
evil organization with a wicked agenda. Eventually, you
may even come to control that evil organization""At first, you will be a minion in service to a sinister plot.
But eventually, you will be a minion no longer. You, if
you can survive, will become the master"
It bears repeating that this campaign is very rail roady, but before the game even starts it has a lot of passages that pretty clearly explain that you should expect rails.
Out of everyone in the party I am the only one who seriously read the players guide and took its words to heart during character creation. Even then 3/5 of our party created characters who would more than happily do any amount of harm to Mitra's followers simply because it would make them happy to see Mitra dethroned.
Been playing through in Doug's game if this. Compared to most APs it doesn't seem super railroaded. My pc was neutral to start, had no loyalty to Asmodeus. But you get plenty of reasons to hate the arrogant goodie people who put you in prison. Plus, power. Thorn provides lots of support and the promise of riches, land, and power. Enough incentive to want a take over.
Yes, but doubly so for this one.Make sure that at least one party member has the capability to heal the other players. Trust me on that one.That should go for every group, and without saying should it not?
I think the point of pickin's comment, and certainly my view, is that it is really easy to get the ability to heal with a good aligned divine class. They pretty much all have it, even if they don't want it.
But, when you go dark side, it becomes a chore that you have to plan for. And even then, you can never match the healing power of goodies....unless your party is all undead.
Yes, but doubly so for this one.Make sure that at least one party member has the capability to heal the other players. Trust me on that one.That should go for every group, and without saying should it not?I think the point of pickin's comment, and certainly my view, is that it is really easy to get the ability to heal with a good aligned divine class. They pretty much all have it, even if they don't want it.
But, when you go dark side, it becomes a chore that you have to plan for. And even then, you can never match the healing power of goodies....unless your party is all undead.
We've had multiple successful parties that relied on wands of CLW for the first 3-5 levels before worrying about spells or anything else. In combat healing is superfluous assuming you are intelligent enough to avoid it being needed, aka don't so stupid stuff that might get you killed regularly.
Post those levels there were few if any problems getting healing as needed.
I guess my point is, being evil doesn't mean healing is more important than when in a good party. Alignment is irrelevant as even a "good" party can function without spontaneously casting cure spells or channeling energy.
Healing is good for any party, it being an evil party doesn't somehow make it and even better idea or more important. Channel positive energy without selective channeling is a liability in most cases (in combat). You have to maneuver to not HELP the opponent in such cases. Out of combat the "good guys" will definitely have a possible edge in healing. In combat if you are using cure spells, you are typically fighting a losing battle as those spell slots could be used in other more useful and effective ways. As often as not, letting your ally stay unconscious for 2 rounds while you use the spell to end the fight faster is a better choice than wasting the action and spell slot on the heal and possibly provoking an AoO from casting. End the fight faster and heal out of combat using items that are cheap and renewable.
It isn't about alignment, it is about playing smart and catering to the group make up, using tactics.
If your players have a brain, be prepared to have to adlib a LOT of the adventures.
Beware the PCs that use their brains. I can't count the number of times that we the PCs have screwed up the story line by our actions. We came up with ways of "trapping" the spire in book two, that constantly confounded the GM. (For the first time ever, I cast Magic Mouth and I cast a lot of them.)
Unfortunately the authors wrote the adventure with a set story, and things happen that make no sense.
Does anybody know any good PDFs that full size the maps to an appropriate level?
I've never done it and am pretty sure I'd fug it up.
As far as character concepts, i gift this thread with one I've thought up as i study the AP, (what I have of it) A (insert melee class here) soldier was carelessly and wrongfully thrown in branderscar to separate him from his one true love Princess Bellinda, all because the king did not approve of their great love. In reality he is a delusional near rapist, (similar to Richard Gecko from Dusk Til dwan) was a guard assigned to her retinue who was a known drunk and during one of his drunken revelries felt up and kissed the princess, he was rendered unconscious, and while he longs for the arms of his lady love, he has no problem ripping through the kingdom talingarde all for the chance of revenge against her father.
I think the point of pickin's comment, and certainly my view, is that it is really easy to get the ability to heal with a good aligned divine class. They pretty much all have it, even if they don't want it.
But, when you go dark side, it becomes a chore that you have to plan for. And even then, you can never match the healing power of goodies....unless your party is all undead.
Exactly. Thank you for stating that more clearly.
In our game the party ended up with a deficit in healing abilities because everyone was so focused on playing evil badasses. We had some healing available, but not as much as you would expect in a campaign. Another player joined the campaign partway in with a character that helped to even things out, but it would have been much easier on the party if they had that from the beginning.
When it came to the newer players, it was very helpful to carefully explain to them the differences between lawful evil and the other alignments when they came up with their characters. Several were struggling with the idea of having a party of evil characters who didn't just backstab each other at the first opportunity. Using examples of "lawful evil" characters from TV shows and movies helped a lot.
In combat healing is superfluous assuming you are intelligent enough to avoid it being needed, aka don't so stupid stuff that might get you killed regularly.
<snip>
As often as not, letting your ally stay unconscious for 2 rounds while you use the spell to end the fight faster is a better choice than wasting the action and spell slot on the heal and...
I don't disagree with you on either of those things. That's good advice in general.
What I found in this particular case, though, was that the focus on playing evil characters seemed to derail the players a bit when they were figuring out what types of characters to play, and (most importantly) how to play them. They were so intent on finding a fun way to be evil that they didn't think things through as a party in ways that they normally would.
That is certainly not going to be everyone's experience (every group is different), but I wanted to indicate to the original poster that it would be a good idea to make sure they consider such things from the start. Given the way the campaign starts, there are more opportunities for getting caught in vulnerable positions that would otherwise be the case.
Still say fiendish vessel is op, a healer that heals evil, damages good is key, as in evil parties some may be positive/alive and some negative/undead. I will state for the last time this AP needs a balanced group more then any other I have run. Nothing but the party should be trusted, get your players to realize it. Unless you have a much larger group then normal you will run into issues if anything from a tactical group is missing.
Caimbuel - I definitely agree with you. The original group that formed to play in our campaign was very caster heavy, with very limited healing and martial capability. We ended up with a slightly larger group of players than anticipated at the last minute, though, and those extras helped to balance those aspects out. If that had not been the case, things would have gone very differently.
As you said, making sure that the party members act as a team (despite being evil) is a key point.
I'm not going to read you whole post since I'm only up to Book 4.
Here what i think
fools' errand:To be frank, the "recruit Chargammon" is purposely a tricky part because, in game, it's a shot in the dark by the Pcs master, Thorn, in order to get rid of them. If the dragon eats them, good for him! if they succeed, good for him
However, recruit Chargammon has many layer of storywise reasons. While the Pcs are surely powerful forces of the darkness, their dread is relatively unknown, and they can, taken one by one, defeated by the mitran forces. The encounter of the two angels is really about this: if your villains stay divided, they'll be vanquished by the glory of heaven.
Chargammon is different: he's an elder dread, literally the worst thing anyone in talingarde could think of! He's a great dragon, able to physically smashing the palade, slaughter the hundreds of people in it and not only kill the princess, but probably, once detected his draconic heritage, do gods knows what (undead, behaded, dancing marionette?). That, and only that, is a danger so dire that could motive a brave king like Markadian V to leave the head of his army in the middle of the attack at Daveryn (which, for dramatic convenience, is gonna happen the same night of pcs errand).A good question could be: can PC create a problem so dire the king will rush there?
Here's my suggestion: if Pcs choose to avoid the wyrm, allow them to king a good strategy to create a similar situation of dread and despair.If i were the DM, my choice would be:
1) The menace of Vetra Kali, come to devour the princess in order to unleash a new form of the tear of Acklys. dozens of daemons in the adarium
2) The summoning of Pit Fiend, called directly in the Adarium, to which offert the heir of house Darius. dozens of devils in the adarium!
3) Fabricate a Chargammon attack: if the pcs have enough dragon bodies, and one of them is a necromancer, they could create a "chargammon" (using the body of either the silver dragon from book 2 or the copper from book 4). Sure, while this marionette would cause the initial dread, if pcs do not use it well, the truth shall be easily revealed.