Review of The Scouring of Gate Pass (Spoilers)

Now that I have run Scouring and let the experience simmer in my mind for a week or so, I'm prepared to take a good hard look at this adventure. First, I'm going to assume that the only other Adventure Path out there is Wizards' Scales of War. I also DM that adventure path, and the PCs there are currently going on 14th level. There are pros and cons to Scales of War but considering there are no other adventure paths, I don't regret starting it; but it was the inadequacies in Scales that led me to Google for other adventure paths. I found Burning Sky. So, understand that my baseline for any quality in an adventure path or adventure is Scales of War.

I'll start off with the good stuff, because it's easy to say good things about Burning Sky. Scouring is an excellent way to start off what looks to be a promising adventure path. The city of Gate Pass is unique, and between the Player's Guide, Campaign Guide, and the adventure itself, I felt very comfortable with the city as a whole, and even made a small prequel encounter that I thought worked well. I'd say it compares favorably with Scales of War's Overlook.

However, my favorite aspect of Burning Sky, the shining gem that makes the adventure path something special, is the brilliant story. The word 'story' means more in DnD than in most other media. The task of an DnD adventure story writer is tough: You are basically writing the detailed outline of a chapter of a novel without knowing your main characters! You don't know if they are good or evil (most writers assume good; EnWorld does not) or what their goals or motivations are. The Scouring of Gate Pass is set up in a way that truly gives players the freedom to solve problems their own way, and see the results of those encounters ripple across the adventure, and if what the writers say is true (I'm inclined to believe them), future adventures as well.

Well, I am the DM -- what looks like a free form and interesting story to me doesn't matter. It needs to appeal to players. Well, when we finished the adventure, I asked the players to rate the adventure on a scale of one to ten. Three of the guys I play with also play in the Scales of War campaign. As a group, they agreed it got a 9/10 from them. Even I was surprised at their enthusiasm. Still, it makes sense; they say that they can't wait to see where their journey takes them and the challenges their characters will face. After each session, they enthusiastically discussed their feelings about NPCs and the moral issues that come up occasionally. Heck, as a DM, I was very excited to see what adventure #2 had in store for us. I just don't get that feeling of anticipation for Scales of War adventures, and neither do my players. In Scales of War, we tend to discuss cool fights and interesting encounters/skill challenges after a session, but never the characters or story.

I also have to commend EnWorld on the production quality and presentation. Before Scouring was published for 4e, I purchased the 3e version of the first adventure to better prepare for the campaign. Well, I haven't touched 3e in years and the layout and presentation of the published adventure instantly reminded me of why I like Wizards' books and PDF adventures: crisp, clear text, excellent art, and most importantly, carefully laid out blocks of information about every topic, all grouped in a way that I as a DM find helpful. The 3e version of the adventure may or may not have been excellent in its time, but 4e set a new standard. And EnWorld met that bar handily, using Wizards' material as inspiration and modifying it where their adventure had a different focus or different angle. I think that a failure in this aspect is the kind of negative that can keep me away from a published adventure. I'm happy to say that I have no problem recommending this adventure as one that is as well laid out, organized, and edited as any Wizards material.

Well, that's all well and good, but no one is perfect. One thing that stood out to me was that the writer converting the adventure path to the new edition has a tough job, and unfortunately, their understanding of the mechanics that underline the new edition are flawed. Never outright wrong, and rarely detrimental, but only rarely. The biggest criticism I have was The Gauntlet encounter that takes place in the fourth act. This was the most poorly designed encounter I've seen in 4e to date. The low quality was noticeable even when skimming through, since I reeled when I saw the map, which, per the art credit, was drawn by Adventure Path designer Ryan Nock on the back of a napkin during a ten minutes lunch break. In an edition when maps and tactical movement are the bedrock of encounter design, including a very poor one is a bad idea. In an encounter that relies VERY heavily on zone-to-zone movement, positioning, speed, and reaction time, like The Gauntlet, it's a travesty.

The Gauntlet encounter itself is also completely unplayable as written. The premise is that the PCs are riding on horseback through a valley (the titular gauntlet), and are ambushed by mercenaries that chase them through a number of areas, or zones, comprising the valley. A set of rules for combat in the gauntlet is given to the DM, but this list is completely nonsensical. First, it seems to throw out the idea of tactical movement completely, dictating the exact number of move actions it would take to traverse the zone. Then, there are strange rules that specify the number of squares away from an enemy a PC is if knocked prone, off the horse. This makes no sense combined with the zone-to-zone movement mechanic.

There are other problems with this encounter as well, but it's possible I may have just misunderstood it. Never-the-less, I insist it is extremely poorly designed; an encounter should never need its own set of rules that modify what the PHB and DMG already provide for us. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how to "complicate" an encounter in 4e with a mechanic such as an ambush chase. The correct solution would have made heavy use of the mounted combat information in the PHB/DMG and added a skill challenge that allowed PCs to navigate from zone to zone. And, of course, a decent map is always required in any combat situation.

I wish this one encounter was the only example of these misunderstandings but that is not the case. A number of NPCs appear to be built strangely, and upon closer inspection, they seem to be designed as PCs-to-NPCs in the style that Torrent and other friendly allies are done. This process is alright for allies like Torrent, but it makes no sense for Renard Woodsman, who is designed to be kind of like a ranger. Renard feels oddly disbalanced in combat because of this and certainly could have been made more effective and interesting. The players thought Kathor was the leader of the Black Horse because he was able to more easily show off his strength, even though Renard was "technically" the bigger challenge.

I also have a bone to pick regarding the "Dead Rising" encounter. As designed, it is my firm belief that the skeletons here can easily completely annihilate most parties. I think a party that is able to fight while spread out might have a chance, but the boneshard skeletons have a close burst 3 attack, and the map is tiny, so this attack covers more than half of the entire area. Each attack deals 3d6+4 damage, averaging out to about 13 damage a pop, and each skeleton does two of these, guaranteed. There are three of these skeletons. That means if we completely ignore the skeletons' other attacks, they are doing about 78 damage (13*6) to each character. The PCs are still level one for this encounter, meaning that most have under 30 hp. If the bursts hit 50% of the time and deal average damage, you've killed the entire party. Keep in mind these are attacks these skeletons are guaranteed to make and I'm not including ANY standard actions here, just immediate actions. This encounter is basically unwinnable unless the PCs know exactly how the power works, stay out of its range, and very carefully, quickly, and luckily take them out. Impossible for my party, four out of five of whom are melee-based.

The one other criticism I have are the Skill Challenges. I have to say that I can't fault EnWorld much here. Skill Challenges are a completely new idea in 4e and even Wizards themselves seem to be having a very though time understand how they should be designed and used. EnWorld is only guilty of the low quality of skill challenges that Wizards adventures promoted for a year. I don't want to spend too much time discussing this because I can point readers (and, hopefully, EnWorld writers) to Mike Mearls' "Ruling Skill Challenges" articles. Mearls was the one who came up with the idea of skill challenges and he is also clearly the only one who understands them. This article runs for many parts and after reading it, I went from hating the idea of skill challenges to completely understanding how they can be extremely fun and playable, if done right. EnWorld hasn't done this, but on the other hand I found that most (but not all) the skill challenges are social encounters and due to the excellent story and characters, play just fine without a single die roll.

Here's a good way to summarize the pros and cons of Burning Sky when compared to Scales of War: When preparing for Scales of War sessions, I have to go through the adventure, and future Scales of War adventures, to "fix" the characters and story, something Wizards does not do well. The encounters, mechanics, and combat, however, very rarely need any work. With Burning Sky, it's the exact opposite: I spend time adjusting the encounters, combat, and mechanics, but make almost no changes to the story, which is brilliant. This seems to put Burning Sky on equal footing with Scales of War but let me be clear: adjusting a few numbers, throwing out a poorly written Mounted Combat sidebar, and tweaking a mechanic or five is easy work that just requires a DM with an understanding of the core 4e rules. Adjusting the story of Scales of War to be enjoyable, rewarding, and non-railroaded is an onerous task that is usually impossible; I merely add a shiny veneer on what is otherwise a completely un-extraordinary story and cast.

I'll take Burning Sky's cons any day. It's brilliant story and characters designed in the best possible way for maximum player enjoyment easily make this excellent start to a promising campaign worth every penny and more. Having started running the second adventure, I can already see a number of improvements, so I have high hopes that I will need to make fewer and fewer modifications. Regardless, I highly recommend this adventure to any DM and would be surprised if it's not one of the finest 4e adventures produced to date.

I re-read my review and I put a lot of emphasis on the negative criticism but just gloss over the things that make the adventure good. Partly, that's because most people reading this probably already know, or can see all the praise that has been deservedly heaped upon it by DMs. And my review is too long as it is. But I figured I'd double post (I hope no one minds) and add some detail about what I really liked about the adventure, in all fairness.

The first moment at which the group and I noticed that we were playing a really special adventure was the resolution of Larion's deception in the repository tower. My players first felt slighted in a way, since they felt they had been railroaded into letting this guy escape. After all, he scaled the tower in two rounds and leaped across and away. That hardly seems fair. I don't like to talk about this kind of thing with players, but I made it clear that if they had picked up on the fairly obvious dialog clue that Larion was not who he seemed, they had a perfect chance to nab him before the climb to the second floor. That decision (to make the slip of the tongue happen on the first floor) is pure brilliance by the writers. The whole encounter is great. The PCs saw that this guy got away, and they had a chance to get him; not with swords and magic but with wit.

The Flaganus Mortus encounter was interesting too, and just like the repository, it showed us that we were in for a unique ride. This encounter packs an emotional punch and sets the stage for some difficult moral choices. Almost seeming to oddly echo some later choices, this encounter features a downed Ragesian soldier who is looking to escape and takes a small child hostage. The players can choose to ignore the hostage or to let him escape; either way, the soldier ruthlessly kills the child. The players made a choice, but it did not affect the outcome, except they've made their position on these types of issues, as a character, clear.

Later encounters mirror this in a way where the actions players take DO have an effect on the outcome. One of the spies who the players chase can actually be befriended. The PCs, if clever and diplomatic, can turn a number of combat encounters into social encounters. The reasons behind this make sense and the authors of this adventure do not hesitate to let PCs slide if their words make sense.

Each encounter has some good things to be said of it. I bashed "The Gauntlet" in my review above, but the flavor works really well here. Even the somewhat botched version of the rules that I ended up running turned out to at least sound good in our heads, if we abstracted the rules away and looked at the events as they unfolded. Mercenaries chasing the PCs down a valley and into a trap is a cool idea and if the mechanics are ignored, this was a great encounter.

Like I said, good things can be said about many things in this adventure, it is truly a very, very good adventure. I hope this post helps to balance the negativity of my first review.

I mostly agree with what EugeneZ said and personaly think this adventure path is pretty much awesome.

That said, I also agree that the two mentioned encounters are problematic. My players only survived "Dead Rising" because I only applied the explosion damage when the skeletons died and because every partymember except the tank evacuated to the back of the room (well, the first exploding skeleton got everyone).

I have additional qualms with "The Gauntlet". After reading it I knew there was pretty much no chance my players would ride into the gauntlet. As expected, they did dismount and go in on foot, which makes the encounter mostly unremarkable (except for a seemingly endless stream of weak badguy-reinforcements).

But even if a party rides into the chasm, the NPC-tactics are pretty ineffective. With the low to-hit chance and damage of the thugs with crossbows and the 58 hitpoints of a warhorse there's little chance of them actually killing one. Even a normal riding horse still has 36 hitpoints.

First, let me start by saying that I'm a player in Eugenez's War of the Burning Sky campaign. I felt I should try to give a player's perspective of the first adventure and how I felt it turned out, so here it is.

Starting out, I felt a strong difference between the way NPC and encounter interactions played out and what I was used to. I was always left with the feeling after any sort of challenge that we could have approached a problem differently. For example, I would like to bring up a the character Shealis. When originally introduced to her, we were given the impression we were facing a spy could not be reasoned with, but, through some interactions with both her and other characters, we were able to get her on our side. It may have not worked out in the long run (A slip of the tongue resulted in Shealis turning against us), I was left with the impression that I, as a player, could have tackled the issue several ways and still resolved it.

As for the encounters, I believe the major problem encounters have already been mentioned enough. Both the undead fight and Gauntlet on horseback had serious problems with them. For the undead fight, being confined to close-quarters and having to defeat monsters that use a close burst attack reaction upon bloodied and dying is brutal for any group, not to mention one with a heavy melee focus (ours at the time was comprised of 4 melee characters and one ranged). The gauntlet battle, while interesting in flavor, did not play out so well. We tried to outrun the attackers during the battle, and all it did was push us into a small space and have to tackle all the NPCs at once.

The role-playing experiences, especially in comparison to Scales of War (my other 4e adventure path), have shown great flexibility in the opportunities in what the players can do. While there are nudges in the expected direction (some came from dealing with Larion before securing a way out of Gate Pass), I have felt that the players are in substantial control to how events play out, and further on how that influences the setting as a whole. Even if these influences are illusory at worst, it has given my character (and the others in the adventure) a strong feel for the world they are taking place in, and has given them a firm grasp to take hold within.

All in all, I have to say that I'm excited to keep playing this adventure path, and look forward to working through the second adventure. We've just started it, and while not much involving the story has happened so far I can tell that we're in for a treat.

I think the Gauntlet encounter does work, but you have to approach it right. Basically - it's a skill challenge. 5 mounted combat skill rolls, accompanied by some rapid-fire narration from the DM as you speed along the road. You only end up fighting if you choose to stop (otherwise, if you spend too long making one skill, you might get some crossbow bolts coming your way or what-have-you).

It's actually best played without a battlemap. Ideally, you shoouldn't find yourself running a combat of any kind. However, the stats are there to provide that option.

I agree it could be explained a little better. But as long as you think "skill challenge" instead of "combat", it works OK.

Dead Rising is indeed the killer - but with my party having 3 ranged attackers, they have managed to get thing done (1 person died because of dropping to 0 hp in middle of the room and being exposed to a blast). They were running away from the skeletons (getting OA in the process) to avoid the blast. With last one it was already a ping-pong game between wizard and sorcerer.

Flaganus Mortus was a nice touch, but my personal favorite is imp playing an angel for a little girl in Eladrin getto and using her as 1-charge disarm trap device. With 3 of my players being fathers of little girls, it probably even went a bit over a board...

I agree that Renard is not very interesting for a major opponent. Anybody has some idea of 'improving' him? Doesn't have to be lot more powerful, just bit more memorable.

New battlemaps for Dead Rising

OK, so the map is tiny. Here is an update that gives more space.
There is a player map and a DM map, so you can see where the baddies go.
Remember that there is low light, so the skeletons on the right may be concealed, and one possibly covered. You can be as mean as you desire!

I'm afraid I just don't see the workable encounter you're talking about, Morrus. What you're saying is also somewhat strange. So, as long as the PCs manage to make some low skill checks, they can bypass this entire encounter? And their reward, presumably, is missing out on the treasure at the bandit camp, to boot, as well as not getting to finally take care of Renard and Kathor, who have been directly and indirectly hounding them the whole adventure.

The real hole in that logic is that I just don't see the Black Horse giving up the chase that easily. Once they are out of the Gauntlet, what is to stop the trained, seasoned mercenaries from riding down a party that is made up of mostly or entirely non-rider-trained PCs?

Also, as someone mentioned in this thread, all of this assumes that for some reason the PCs actually decide to try and run, against all logic. Most groups will have someone who realizes it's an ambush, and at that point I think very few groups will choose to run. Since there was no battle map, the players were forced into a strange situation with no real combat rules. I gave them the rules for moving from zone to zone so they made a halfhearted attempt to move through the Gauntlet, but found Kathor blocking the way out.

I think no one is debating the flavor and cool theme here, horse chase through the Gauntlet, but it just doesn't make sense from any gameplay perspective.

As for "Dead Rising", the bigger map would help some parties but I am completely convinced that it is a level 6 encounter (and the party is level 1 at the time) and if the DM really runs these guys like they were meant to be run, they'll kill most parties. I think these kinds of encounters are much harder for first level parties than a Level 8 encounter is for a level 4 party, for example. First level parties are really, really squishy.

I removed the Dead Rising encounter. Difficulty issues aside, it didn't add anything to the story. I moved the XP and treasure elsewhere and went on to the good parts.

Man, hard to avoid spoilers around here as a player (I know, you warned in the title - just trying to find the info I am looking for without reading them as best I can)! But, doing OK at that...besides, I have a horrible memory.

First, fantastic adventure. Really loving it.

But...

Might want to call those new maps out in an errata or it's own thread. Or, if you did, it's probably because I am avoiding that thread due to spoilers [edit - I see a thread now about maps, and it's labeled spoilers, so that must be why - I will forward the thread to my DM in hopes it's the thread with new maps]

We had a near TPK last night with that bone shard encounter, and a death. And, that was with eliminating entirely one of the two bone shard explosions (they exploded just on being bloodied, not on death).

Due to the size of the room, it was nearly impossible to get out of the way, or lure the foes away from an unconscious ally.

This is our THIRD near TPK in this module...which is close to the number of big battles we've had. This is a pretty fricken deadly adventure!

I thought it was ironic that the Warehouse battle teaches a party to not split up or else face death...and then then next encounter is this one, which teaches a party to split up or face death!

But please, don't take these minor criticisms as overall criticism. We are loving this adventure, and cannot wait to see what happens next. Definitely the most "heroic" I've felt during the first level of play so far, and winning one very close battles feels better than winning ten easy ones.