Adventure Path

I'm sure this has been asked several times before, but what's the highest rated or regarded Adventure Path? I'm thinking of starting one for my group.

Kingmaker is pretty popular but it really depends on the feel of the campaign you want. The Adventure Paths do a pretty good job of each one being different and having separate lists of pros and cons about them.

I've played through the first two books of Rise of the Runelords (the game ended with a TPK followed by one player's efforts to disrupt the reboot). It feels like Dungeons and Dragons to me. It is very traditional with a nice mix of dungeon, wilderness, and urban encounters. Nice mix of enemies too.

I'm also about two books into Curse of the Crimson Throne (the campaign is still going). It is very urban in feel. There are lots of human enemies, but still a good deal of variety as well.

I've just started the fifth book of Kingmaker. It has featured lots and lots of wilderness (h)exploration with a good variety of enemies. Kingdom-building is almost a game unto itself.

You really could do a lot worse than any of these three APs.

As an aside, I've heard people talk about getting really bogged down in Serpent's Skull-- that said, I really want to give it a try.

Oh yeah, I would personally wait until June before starting Rise of the Runelords. The anniversary version will be out by then (updated to Pathfinder rules), as will the corresponding set of minis.

exile said:

I've played through the first two books of Rise of the Runelords (the game ended with a TPK followed by one player's efforts to disrupt the reboot). It feels like Dungeons and Dragons to me. It is very traditional with a nice mix of dungeon, wilderness, and urban encounters. Nice mix of enemies too.

I'm also about two books into Curse of the Crimson Throne (the campaign is still going). It is very urban in feel. There are lots of human enemies, but still a good deal of variety as well.

I've just started the fifth book of Kingmaker. It has featured lots and lots of wilderness (h)exploration with a good variety of enemies. Kingdom-building is almost a game unto itself.

You really could do a lot worse than any of these three APs.

As an aside, I've heard people talk about getting really bogged down in Serpent's Skull-- that said, I really want to give it a try.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I'm leaning towards Runelords.

More than one thread at Paizo covers this, but the last one I read was about 2 weeks ago, so I don't know if it has sank to the bottom of the board by now or not.

Usually when I hear or read bad things about a Paizo AP, it is never the whole thing, just a particular module or maybe the lack of a link between adventures. Or sometimes a particular encounter or rarely whole adventure is too hard or maybe lacks a reason to motivate the players.

My experience is unfortunately limited.

I played through 4 and a half adventures of the Savage Tide before our game died. It was fun (for me) but deadly.

I played through maybe the whole 1st book of Legacy of Fire before our game died. Actually, that isn't true, I joined after they started so I don't know how much I missed. I know I missed the pugwumpis. I liked some of the unique treasure and encounters.

We just finished book 1 of the Carrion Crown. I could post a more comprehensive bunch of info on that. Again, I joined after they started. I don't think anything we fought was particularly deadly to the whole group, but perhaps that's because I'm considering meta-game issues. The DM is more fluid with interpretting the rules, so for example when the rogue rolled a natural 1 for an attack he ended up stabbing our grappled teammate in one battle, instead of completely missing. On the other hand, sometimes things that should not damage an opponent inflict a point or two of damage. The haunts were probably more dangerous due to ability damage. The ghost wizard was dangerous up until he decided to cast a spell in front of the barbarian who smacked him with an attack of opportunity. The rest of the group was relieved, so I kept shut and didn't ask why a wizard, even a ghost, would try to fiddle with spells in front of a warrior. I'm not privy to the motivations of the NPC's of course. The treasure we took from this whole thing was piddly. I suspect the DM wants to keep a tight reign on treasure. I will probably eventually take Craft Wondrous Item if the 2nd adventure is also treasure poor.

Soon I will also be playing a campaign of either Curse of the Crimson Throne, (more likely) or Kingmaker (less likely). We aren't starting that until March.

I've also read a few random AP adventures and played through at least one, but don't recall much other than being entertained.

Falstaff said:

I'm sure this has been asked several times before, but what's the highest rated or regarded Adventure Path? I'm thinking of starting one for my group.

Click to expand...

So much depends on your group in my opinion. Several of the APs have a different feel depending on AP, so knowing what your group likes might help folks suggest a good fit for you.

IronWolf said:

So much depends on your group in my opinion. Several of the APs have a different feel depending on AP, so knowing what your group likes might help folks suggest a good fit for you.

Click to expand...

True Enough.

Here is my take on the Pathfinder RPG APs:

Council of Thieves:

CoT: The Bad Points

Suffers from a misleading title, as it creates expectations the AP never delivers on. Had it been called "Shadows of Westcrown" or even "City of Devils", it would have been better received.

Also suffers from a predilection to provide FAR too much backstory that never really manages to get to the players in a timeley way. The intro adventure starts off poorly and ends poorly (it has a pretty good "middle" though). As intro modules in an AP goes, it is probably the worst to date. That's not helpful at all. On the plus side, it's easy to improve on your own and all the material which has been released since, especially the forthcoming Blood of Fiends and the judicious use of the Inquisitor class in to the HellKnights and Dotari make this very easy to do.

The entire AP was written by authors who did not have the finished PFRPG rules, so encounter balance is sometimes off. (Listen to the podcasts for the warnings).

CoT: The Good Points

To its credit, Vol 2 and 4 of CoT are awesome. Vol 2 of Council of Thieves, The Six-Fold Trial by Richard Pett is still the best Adventure Path volume yet released, bar none. That makes it, by the way, one of the best adventures ever created in the history of RPGs -- and Vol 4 is also excellent and in the top 5 in the PFRPG AP volumes.

You run CoT to be able to run Vols 2 and 4 (and to a lesser extent, 6). The odd numbered volumes are the poorer ones in the series. It's like the Star Trek movies

Other pluses to Council of Thieves:

• Plays relatively fast for an AP and can be finished in about 9 months by most groups who play weekly.
• Will benefit greatly from GMs who customize their AP campaigns.
• Will benefit hugely from next month's Blood of Fiends - an AWESOME Tiefling Player companion for Pathfinder. (The best Player Companion to date, hands down).
• Also benefits from our having deconstructed almost all of it on the podcast, with interviews from all of the authors from Books 1 through 5. (Vol six is coming). This gives you more in-depth background material to prepare with than any other AP in existence.

Overall: It's a lot better than it is given credit for. A "B" to B+ overall, and not the C- a lot of people view it as.

Kingmaker

An AP for people who don't like APs. It trades on nostalgia for so-called Old Skool sandbox campaigns -- though to be fair -- no sandbox capaign was ever like Kingmaker.

Volume 1 is solid and features an excellent vignette design with just enough story to make it all hold together well. In many ways, Stolen Land is the "shared experience" of the most Pathfinder RPG players so far.

Vol 2 is also solid, but the story is greatly lacking here. City/Kingdom building is the "story" instead -- and that ain't enough. Volume 3 is excellent -- but deadly. Greg Vaughan at his finest. You really COULD end your Kingmaker campaign here and it wold be AOK to do so.

Volume 4 is not as good as Vol 3, but still enjoyable...to a point. The final dungeon seems strained and the reason I was going in there was never really made sufficiently clear.

Volume 5 is rather iffy imo and will test the patience of your players. I am NOT a fan of Vol 5.

Volume 6 is not grounded well enough in the rest of the campaign and feels like an afterthought. Vol 5 was the real "kingdom" climax and a lot of groups would be better off ending it right there or picking up on their own plotlines should they care to.

Kingmaker's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: it's TOO DAMN LONG. You can only play an AP for so long before you've been playing it too long and Kingmaker crosses that threshold of patience by the start of the end dungeon in the fourth book. Kingmaker can EASILY take two years to play -- which is too damn long for my tastes.

The Kingdom building rules are cool, but they were not well tested and they will shatter into a zillion pieces if min-maxed even slightly.

I like Kingmaker a lot and think it's a great AP. But it isn't the Second Coming of DragonLance in terms of its market altering effect. It's good -- it's even VERY good. But it isn't as excellent as some people make out.
We've covered Vols 1 to 3 already on the podcast with Vol 4 and 5 due out "soon". That's a plus as we cover most of the AP VERY deeply.

B+ with flashes of A-.

Serpent's Skull

I am still in the midst of playing this so I will defer judgment on it.
I do think, however, that best part about Serpent's Skull is the story they started off telling in the very first scene in the first book -- and then decided to go tell something else, instead.

On the plus side, it looks like the story they START telling in Seprent's Skull is the one they are going for in Skull and Shackles.

B, so far. Seeing as I sort of know where this is all going, I'm very hopeful that SS ends on a high note.

Carrion Crown

There is some excellent adventuring in Carrion Crown. The intro is solid, though the final boss battle suffers from tactics which nerf an overpowered monster from otherwise wiping the party -- a deus ex mechanic which I personally loathe. The rest of it, and especially the implementation of haunts, are great.

The second adventure is also solid, though perhaps it over-reaches. A fine balance of role-playing and combat investigation. Richard Pett rocks, once again.

Broken Moon, Vol 3, failed to deliver for me. Worse, it was the part in the AP where the thread holding all of this together was feeling strained.

The balance of the AP, which three volumes I have read but have not played, suffers as well from this lack of a coherent and believable story. It's obvious that the overall plot is just there to drag people from theme ride to theme ride, which is just not the best way to write an AP.

B+ for the adventures, but B- for the overall strained story arc.

Jade Regent

Story wise, the best written and most consistent of all of the PFRPG APs. The bells and whistles from across all of Paizo's product line are deployed in a full court press to back it up. The first volume is strong, the second is a little weak for Greg Vaughan (which makes it damned good by every other adventure writer's standard). Surprisingly, Vol 3 by Jason Nelson is probably the high point of the AP. He hits all the right buttons here and the adventure, for being a mere waypoint along the way, is just really really STRONG. Great stuff.

Vol 4, by Richard Pett is also decent and finally brings the Hobgoblins back in to the Paizo fold.

I have not finished reading 5 and 6 and so make no comment there.

If you like far-east Asian themes, this one will be great. If you don't, books 1-3 are essentially western adventures so you won't mind.

Story wise, the strongest of the Paizo APs released to date. Though this comes at the expense of reduced GM flexibility. The choo-choo train is not visible, but from time to time, you can hear it in the distance.

Solid B+ with flashes of A-.

Skull and Shackles

"Pirate Maker" and the first morally ambiguous of Paizo's APs. I am looking forward to it immensely -- and fearing it even more.

You see, I expect that this will suffer greatly from the choice to make it a "true to Golarion" AP (with minimal gunpowder) instead of being true to the idea of, you know, FRIKKIN' PIRATES, where ships beat to quarters, blast the enemy and sail amidst blue waters to mysterious islands in search of buried treasure.

Pirates, in order to BE PIRATES need cannon, rum and musketballs a' plenty to go with the eyepatches, the rapiers and all those knives in the sails. If Paizo is selling us the Battle of Salamis with eye-patches, I am going to be VERY unhappy at all the work we are going to have to do to turn the PIRATE dial up. And yes, I fully expect that they are going to essentially try to sell us the Battle of Salamis with eye patches. I'm NOT happy about this. Screw campaign consistency -- I want PIRATES.

I have this sinking feeling I am going to be disappointed. Nevertheless, this ship sails in about 1.5 months. I hope I'm dead wrong (and fear that I am not).

Rise of the Runelords

I received Pathfinder Adventure Path #1 in the mail nearly five years ago. I started to read it and thought "hey -- this is cool! I'm going to stop reading this one as I want to play it"

I have resisted the urge ever since and I AM going to play it this summer, finally.

Recommendation: Play Council of Thieves now and end it at book 4 (which is where the AP naturally ends anyway as it's not possible to "top it"), then switch to Rise of the Runelords in the summer. Listen to all of the CoT episodes of the podcast and you should be good to go and get to the end of Volume 4 of CoT by Gencon at the latest, playing weekly. Purchase Blood of Fiends as soon as it is released and integrate it into CoT.

Within Paizo, RotRL is still seen as their "best" AP, for what it's worth as so much of the history of Golarion is wrapped up in it. With the miniatures set and all the bubbled over high expectations and the sheer depth of Golarion material out there now to fill in the gaps from when RotRL was first released, I have extremely high hopes for this AP becoming the "shared experience" of all of the 1st Edition of Pathfinder RPG.

Can't XP Steel_Wind, but I think his analysis of the APs is pretty good here.

Curse of the Crimson throne is excellent (I’ve read it but never run it).

It does seem quite challenging to run, and in my opinion requires a certain type of player (and character) to be successful. The first three episodes are set in Korvosa, and the characters need to care about the city. It’s also helpful if the players are keen on exploring the urban environment – players who prefer to sit around waiting for the adventure to come to the characters can have an ok time, but will miss out on a lot of what the city has to offer.

The players also need to understand that while the city is dangerous, and might resemble a dungeon in some aspects, it is still “civilisation”. Setting fire to buildings, hacking through angry mobs, or murdering apparently respectable citizens in front of the town guard, is generally a bad idea.

It is also clear what the city’s real problem is by the end of book 2 (astute players may figure it out a bit sooner; paranoid players may have guessed it by the end of the first session simply by jumping to conclusions). However, the PCs are not able to directly combat the problem until the start of book 6. Some players may find this frustrating.

The finale of the third book has some plotting issues, but they are the sort that the players hopefully won’t notice (i.e. the bad guy making a serious error of judgement on the assumption that the PCs are not very bright). There is also a number of uses of a 3.5 monster that has been seriously beefed up in Pathfinder, making conversion a bit tricky.

You could easily end the campaign after part 3, but after that it assumes the PCs leave Korvosa. They might be reluctant to do that, but the city has now become too dangerous for them. Some players might see that as a railroad.

Part 4 is a massive railroad – do quest A, which leads to Quest B, which leads to Quest C - but I think the encounters are very good, and the PCs are free to get off the train any time they want. Declining the challenge here will make things a bit more difficult later on, but won’t prevent them from succeeding.

Part 5 is a dungeon crawl in a pretty nasty (and somewhat one-themed) dungeon. I consider it to be a welcome change of pace, but players dedicated to urban intrigue might find it boring.

The PCs return to Korvosa for a final showdown in part 6. I don’t tend to like the last instalment of adventure paths because of the (unavoidable) high level silliness that they entail, but this one does a good job of tying up loose ends and explaining what has been going on up to this point. It also makes some of the stuff that happened earlier actually matter – NPCs might be able to help the PCs, or they might be dead, depending on earlier events.