Best Adventure Path?

[im_robertb]

Hi there folks,

The D&D bug is getting to me once again, and once again, it means I'll have to DM if I want a game. Something I've noticed with my games is that they're best when I'm running a premade adventure; when I'm improvising and building towards my overarching plotline, they get linear and fall apart towards the end. So, I'm looking for a premade adventure path for 4E.

I have many sets of dungeon tiles.
I have a dry-erase battlemat, 19 x 28 squares.
I track conditions with plastic tokens from Litko Aerosystems.
I'm aiming to have 5-6 players.
I'm aiming to play once per week, for 4 hours each session.
I don't like ending sessions mid-battle.
I might end up converting skill challenges to the Obsidian system.

I'm aware of the Scales of War AP, the published WotC adventures (beginning with Keep on the Shadowfell), and War of the Burning Sky. Of these or other options, what should I go with?

 

[Shin Okada]

How long the adventure path should be? AFAIK there are not so many if you really want a full adventure path which cover L1-L30

H1-E3 adventures published by WotC
Scales of War adventure path on Dungeon (D&D Insider)

Those 2 series cover L1 to L30. And they are at least descent, if not super.

Regarding War of the Burning Sky campaign, now the adventure #6 is released. Adventures are meant to be released roughly one per bi-month and each adventure covers about 3 levels. So the series need 4 or 5 more adventures. If you play 4 hour-games weekly, your PCs will level up by 1 per 2-3 games. That means it will take 15-20+ months for your PCs to reach L30. So the adventure path will catch you up, I hope.

Now WotC is releasing adventures for new adventure path, called Chaos Scar. This path is composed of short adventures which includes 3-5 combat encounters each. They are quite nice. But they are releasing multiple adventures for PCs of certain level and now the highest level adventure is for 5th level PCs. So if you are to play once per week, you will soon find there is no more adventure for your PCs' level, I guess.

 

[Truename]

I'm aware of the Scales of War AP, the published WotC adventures (beginning with Keep on the Shadowfell), and War of the Burning Sky. Of these or other options, what should I go with?

My group played Scales of War through the end of level 10 and now we're just finishing up level three in WotBS 4e. I prefer WotBS.

Scales of War is combat-focused. It has excellent set-piece battles and good combat encounter design in general. Role-playing opportunities are rare, NPCs are two-dimensional (and infrequent), and the adventures are very linear. There's little backstory to help you if the players go off the rails. The overall plot is suitably epic and the feel of the campaign changes nicely from tier to tier, but there no real player impact on the outcome of the campaign. Scales of War is easy to pick up and play with minimal prep work.

Choose Scales of War if your group loves combat and doesn't want much more. A "good parts" version that cuts out a third or half of the encounters in each adventure (with accelerated leveling) could be a blast to play.

War of the Burning Sky is complex and deep. Its combat encounter design is generally mediocre and some monsters are poorly balanced. Role-playing opportunities abound, NPCs are rich and detailed, and the adventures offer lots of player choice with meaningful consequences. The adventures abound with notes about backstory and what to do if the players go off the rails and there are generally multiple paths through each adventure. I haven't seen the overall plot yet, but it doesn't seem quite as epic in scope as SoW, but it may have more emotional impact. The tiers don't look like they'll be differentiated much, if at all. WotBS takes a fair amount of prep, but it's worth it.

Choose War of the Burning Sky if your group enjoys role-playing opportunities, wants to see real consequences for their actions, and you're willing to invest the effort to make it sparkle.

For me, WotBS is the better series. The combat and railroad of SoW got boring after ten levels.

 

[vagabundo]

One of the few APs that really grabs me is the Savage Tide AP from Piazo for 3.5e. While it is not made for 4e, it is pretty easy to convert and you can play around with the structure a little - it's got cut throat thieves, demogorgon, cultists of demogorgon, pirates, bullywugs, did I mention pirates? The PC get their own ship and get to sail to the Isle of Dread. It is all very Pirates of the Caribbean

Sasserine is a great city and it is something a little different than the usual DND city in a temperate climate.

The AP is a little hard to get, but the PDF's can be purchased from Paizo, or back issues picked up from ebay.

 

[im_robertb]

Going from levels 1-30 would be ideal, but shorter would be fine. I'd just like to have something premade where the PCs can go where they want and it'll be ready, whether it's rooms in a dungeon or events in a storyline.

Having read through the first few SoW adventures, I've found that a lot of the battle maps are overly complex and/or large, some to the point where it would take me 15 minutes to draw half the map on my battlemat, the rest wouldn't fit, and the PCs still wouldn't understand what I have drawn.

KotS seems to have more reasonable maps for the most part, with one of the larger ones actually fitting perfectly onto my battlemat. Simpler maps to draw, and interesting combats, it looks like.

Is there any way that I can preview WotBS? Even just part of the first adventure?

 

[Shin Okada]

Is there any way that I can preview WotBS? Even just part of the first adventure?

The easiest way is to become a subscribed member of EN World for a month. That costs you only 3 dollars. And you can download all the currently available PDFs.

And, do you start the campaign from the 1st-level? Or is that OK for you to start your campaign at the higher level?

If that is OK, Revenge of the Giants seems to be another good option. PCs will start at L12 and then level up to L17 by the end of this mega-adventure.

 

[im_robertb]

I'd like to start at 1st level, since at least some of my party will be new.

 

[Riastlin]

Some of the initial SOW adventures are a bit iffy. However, I am currently running a group through the path. Overall, I think its a pretty good path. As mentioned, the NPCs are not terribly fleshed out, but in some ways that isn't entirely bad as it gives you license as the DM to flesh them out yourself to suit the tastes of your group.

The two biggest problems with the SOW AP (at least in heroic tier) are that 1) Some of the early adventures are a bit of a railroad or overly long dungeon slog, and 2) there are some consistency issues which require you to read ahead in order to properly prepare earlier adventure.

As to point 1) I did feel the need to adjust 2 of the first 3 adventures (though Siege of Bordrin's Watch is pretty good). Rescue at Rivenroar is just a bit too long and some of the monsters don't make much sense. Umbraforge is just completely locked on rails and suffers from consistency issues in spots if you had not read it prior to running Siege. All in all though, there wasn't much required to adjust the adventures into a format suitable for my party.

One nice thing about SOW is that it offers a nice, big, epic plot that is also roughly broken up into 3 tiers. This allows you to conclude the campaign around level 12 for instance without the players feeling as though they failed to accomplish everything. The same also appears to be true around the start of Epic tier (though I have not read all the way up to there yet). Given how long it could take to get from 1 to 30, having in out in a couple places isn't entirely bad.

Sadly, I cannot comment on WOTBS as I have not viewed it. However, I have heard good things about it, and am strongly considering signing up just so I can grab the adventures -- only thing really holding me back from signing up to take a look is that with two campaigns going already, I just don't foresee being able to run WOTBS anytime soon.

 

[Herschel]

Scales of War is really good, at least in play. Every now and then we've hit a rough battle but overall it's been great with plenty of room for characters to breathe and grow. The plotline keeps you going on a fairly linear trail, but they leave a good deal of room to work around, especially for a good DM.

 

[ourchair]

You can build some decent adventure paths out of existing material or use older pre-4E stuff.

I think for players who aren't jaded or closed-minded, they can overlook the kinks of running the 3.5 Eberron Adventure Path (The Forgotten Forge, Shadows of the Last War, Whispers of the Vampire's Blade, Eyes of the Lich Queen, etc.) and even stuff in the 4E Game Day adventure Khyber's Harvest and Seekers of the Last Crown in there somewhere.

Also, some of the material that's coming out from Dark Sun -- Vault of Darom Madar, Bloodsand Arena, The Lost Cistern of Aravek -- seems good if you don't intend to have a high fantasy meta-arcish "heroes" plot and just want your players to kill things and take stuff but with unique setting flavor.