I am expecting to start Strange Aeons in January 2017 with my existing group. We play only monthly, so my journal may quickly fall behind those of other posters who are running the same campaign. My regrets. Currently my players' characters are all 5th level, and are at present grabbing their ankles in the old Judges Guild adventure Tegel Manor (adapted for Pathfinder rules system). The group was expecting to move on to play in Ravenloft's Hour of the Knife, and then onto Return to the Tomb of Horrors. I have not yet informed my players of my hopes of dropping them back to 1st level to begin Strange Aeons, and I expect some resistance from one or more players. I don't know exactly how it will resolve, though I don't want to start them in Chapter 2 of the AP. If we reach an impasse on starting the characters back at character level 1, I will probably have the group start chapter 1 at a higher level and just up the difficulty.
This is the first adventure path I have run since Age of Worms in 2006-07. I have wanted to run another AP for a long time, but I always find things about each AP that I don't like enought to put me off of GM'ing it. Second Darkness, Serpent's Skull and Mummy's Mask each almost made the cut, but I always came up with enough reasons I didn't like the path to where I didn't follow through and run it. I was about to go with a Pathfinder version of 1st Editions's Against the Giants to Vault of the Drow, but the work load of coming up with stat blocks for all of the drow in D1 & D3 put me off of that at least for the time being. But with an AP based on Call of Cthulhu, I have no reasons not to run this gem, and been waiting for a long time in hopes of a Lovecraft-based AP. One of the players has stated that he wants to play a character all the way to level 20, and as Strange Aeons ends at 16th, I'll run a "Sequel" to Age of Worms from 17th-20th if the group hasn't fired me as DM before then...
I don't know what to tell you to expect regarding a character casualty count. In years past, Turin the Mad has advised me to get in touch with my more 'benevolent' GM side, at least to outward appearances. In this AP though, I don't expect a pleasant run for the characters, as the Call of Cthulhu theme of the AP suggests character death and insanity throughout. Either way, this is Pathfinder meets Call of Cthulhu folks, so I will "benevolently" inform my players to bring reams of paper for new character sheets, because they're gonna need 'em. I look forward to corrosponding with many of you I've had the pleasure of chatting with in years past on these threads. Regards, KGM
DOT!
Funny thing about amnesia and losing all your stuff is that having a big pile of hp means you can get munched on far longer than expected. A typical 5th level group sans gear, spell books and holy symbols is in for a very rough time right out of the gate.
Very few PCs have Improved Unarmed Strike, Catch Off-Guard and other "oh carp we have no stuff!" capabilities. I say let 'em come in. Leave XP and encounters exactly as-is.
As far as getting more stuff, well ... they get what's in there, if they find it. It is easy enough to stash a 1st level Wizard spell book in the place. The XP accrual won't give them enough of an edge.
Maybe they get "dominated, total party wiped" in Tegel Manor only to awaken amnesiacs with cotton mouth and no stuff in Strange Aeons. (I'd suggest a well-timed Yithain mind swap via a certain campaign trait, but that's just me.)
Sure, they're 5th level. The divine caster (if any) has to re-discover whatever Gawd they believed in, then re-affirm their faith over time. Similar for spontaneous casters, they have to rebuild their confidence in their abilities over time. Wizards have to acquire and translate looted spell books. (Spell component pouches are not a big deal. Leave 2 or 3 in the starting area.) Over time - i.e., at the mentioned normal advancement points - they re-acquire spell level access as appropriate.
Out of the gate they have 1st level spells and cantrips/orisons. No 2nd and 3rd level. When the script says "should be 3rd level roughly here", they get 2nd level spells (prepared casters). And so on. Once their current level catches up to expected level, their abilities will have caught up as they have regained their confidence - if not their memories - in full.
Personally, I give them a decent chance of at least 1 fatality despite having 5 HD each in the first ten encounters. Decent chance depending on what direction they go they'll have several.
I will be following this. I may also end up running it. If so I may do a journal also. I don't think I will run it as hard as I ran AoW for my other group though. It wouldn't go over well.
My group was running this a while back, but it fell apart due to personal issues (daughter and her then boyfriend were both in the group, and it didn't end well). I'll be very interested in this.
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This campaign hasn't gotten off the ground. One of my new players was GM'ing Rappan Athuk prior to joining, and offered to continue gm'ing it. I've wanted to have a crack at that dungeon, so I agreed to play for a while. We'll see how it goes.
We played the 1st session of Rappan Athuk a couple of weeks ago. I ended up playing multiple characters. I had a 7th level elf wizard "blondie" who got greased in an absolutely evil 110 ft deep spiked pit, when he was at Full HP, while his duergar cohort "Tuco" survived the fall. Pretty brutal.