Ashes at Dawn outside the CC AP

[golem101]

Hope it's the right forum area for this thread. Please move it to a more appropriate section if deemed appropriate.

In a few months I'll run (for the second time) Blood of the Gorgon, which I planned to be the capstone adventure for a rather shortlived campaign - the campaign outlived the planned timeframe, but that's another story. Right now I'm looking for stuff to keep the campaign going onward for a few levels more after that adventure, and it struck me that Ashes at Dawn would be quite appropriate.

For those who don't know...

Spoiler:

the BBEG of Blood of the Gorgon is an alchemist who dabbles a bit too much with monstruous extracts, and during the final stages he escapes a confrontation with the PCs only to be found afterwards in his not-so-secret lair outside the city, fully corrupted by his blood-tainted concoctions

So, the PCs follow him up to an altogether new city, and the BBEG is not just hiding, but actively wreacking havoc among a secret vampire coven, hiding among the jaded and bustling upper class.

For further reference, the campaign is Andoran-based, mostly centered in the Darkmoon Vale area with Olfden as the base of operations. The vampires would be ex-nobles biding their time during this "democracy madness", rightfully scared to be exposed to the public by the recent events.

Do you have any tips and tricks to play for this adventure? Suggestions on stuff to change, add, remove? Is it a good idea at all, or should I scrap it and look at other more plausible material?

Thanks!

[Rakshaka]

You could go with the following:

1)Said BBEG replaces Radvir Giovanni somehow and serves as his role in Ashes at Dawn. While this directly transposes the plan to actively wreck havoc on the vampires, it does create a problem in that once he's defeated, you still have another half of a module.

2) Have said BBEG serve as the catalyst for the development of the Bloodbrew elixer (instead of the Whispering Way), and have him among the Barstoi witches at the abbey. (I like this the best even if it increases the difficulty of the fight.

3)Have him as his own plot, replacing the witches with him. In this way, you can customize the abbey with your own encounters more thematically in line with this villain (maybe replace a couple of the wood golems for an alchemical golem).

There is a lot of material available about the module itself on this board, most notably the DM thread (which explains a couple problems with the module, like Radvir's unlikeliness as written to be able to capture vampires). The writer, Neil Spicer, has been quite pro-active in responding and giving feedback about the module, so there's a lot of good stuff in there. Beyond that, I did a few things for the module here. Here is a review I did for the module, and here is a thread I wrote about expanding Caliphas. Hope that helps!

[golem101]

Great stuff, thank you!