Pathfinder 1E Serpent's Skull AP (spoilers)

[Crothian]

My Council of Thieves Campaign ends tomorrow night and after that we are going to start up Serpent Skull. I know it is seen as one of the weaker ones and frankly CoT was not that great as written either. But I'm now in the habit of taking these thins apart an rebuilding them faster stronger and with a bit more clarity of plot.

Anyone have a chance to run or play this yet? I'm curious what has worked and what has not. Also, one of them was written by our very own Piratecat so perhaps he can weigh in with some cool ideas.

I am running it as a sequel to CoT. This is going to be another one of my gaming experiments so we will have a mix of mid level and low level characters. Players are giving the choice of keeping their old character or starting a new one at level one. In CoT I enhanced a section so that there would be a direct link and reason to go on the path of Serpent's Skull.

 

[Starfox]

I have read serpent's skull with an eye to playing it after I finish my current campaigns, but not actually played it.

I find the 4 first parts quite interesting - it is a bit of a railroad so it's very important to have characters interested in jungle exploration from the start. Which leads naturally to having them be pathfinders. Makes part 2 even more or a railroad, but also smoother to play.

Parts 5 and 6 don't appeal much to me - just a high-level paste on dungeon. This is where I'd want to flesh things out - or cut it back, depending on the group.

 

[Epametheus]

First off, SPOILERS. If you're planning to play through the adventure path, you shouldn't read my post.

Spoiler

I played Serpent's Skull all the way through. Books 1, 3, and 4 are primarily about exploring large, open areas. book 2 is technically an overland race. Book 5 and 6 deal with invading Serpentfolk citadels, with rather high stakes involved.

Some things that may help, based on my experience and some a comment from James Jacobs:

Encourage people to make characters that are explorers or at least well suited to be. I played a half-orc rogue who used a trait to get survival as a class skill, and worked out his skills to be a master woodsman. My character suited the campaign well, and overall I enjoyed it.

Merge books 3 and 4. 4 is largely about investigating dungeons that the party should technically come across in 3. I'd have Juliver and the Night of the Hissing Dead event at the end of Book 3 simply happen once the party sorts things out with the Radiant Muse, and then use the Feast of the Gorilla King as the end of book 4.

Books 3 and 4 drag out, though. The aboleth and the rakshasa were the highlights of book 3 (the green god less so, since the magus's shocking grasp shut down the froghemeth hard). The Feast of the Gorilla King and the spider croc were the highlights of book 4; the rest of it was pretty forgettable. You'll want to look into ways to streamline those books.

Our group enjoyed books 5 and 6 considerably more, since the story finally got in motion again, and there was a real goal beyond "go look under every stone."

Re-write Eando Kline's statblock. As written, he's a complete joke. We changed him from being a multiclassed mess to an archeologist archetype bard, and he was suddenly much more respectable.

Nudge your players towards learning Azlanti as they took towards exploring the ruins. Book 6 will be better if they can actually communicate with General Aveshai.

 

[Crothian]

Might as well mark the thread as spoilers to make it easier to discuss and read. [MENTION=2]Piratecat[/MENTION] and see if Kevin has some cool advice.

I hit the players over the head with making sure their characters want to explore and emphasized how this is going to be very Indiana Jones like. Two of the characters who have characters that are actors I suggested they learn Azlanti as many old plays and writings are in that language. I went about it that way so it looks like I suggested it for background reasons and not for campaign reasons.

I've been going through the bestiaries to widen the creatures for random encounters. I like the mosquito swarm and giant chameleon and some other animals and insects. I'm looking for a little wider variety but don't want many more monsters or have anything close to power of the whatever the flying thing is called.

Has anyone done more with all the wrecked ships? There is so little variety that it seems they all have some undead and not much else. I'm hoping someone has taken the time to come up with a simple sentence or two for each to just make them seem different.

I'm going to also insert two Pathfinder modules that they have written that take place in the Expanse to broaden the AP. As the map pack shows there are basically three locations for this AP so I want to do a little more with that. I like the Pathfinder modules so being able to use some that are set in the same place is a good bonus. I tried to do that with Council of Thieves but the only module set in Westcrown was not actually in Westcrown.

 

[BobROE]

Has anyone done more with all the wrecked ships? There is so little variety that it seems they all have some undead and not much else. I'm hoping someone has taken the time to come up with a simple sentence or two for each to just make them seem different.

I think someone was doing something like that on the Paizo boards, so you might check there.

 

[Crothian]

They had some there. Another poster there came up with a couple more dreams to foreshadow some other things going on in the Island. I just want to make sure the group is stuck on the island for a while.

 

[Crothian]

In the first book I plan to mess with expectations. I know the group is going to want to join the Pathfinders in book 2 so Gelik is going to be a bit of an ass to them. Sasha on the other hand is going to be the lone truly competent NPC on the island. I'm going emphasis her Ranger skills and usefulness. But she is not going to want to allow the other NPCs to be dead weight. There are going to be some great conflicts between her and Jask. As a criminal she is not going to trust Jask though I predict the PCs will expect him to be wrongfully accused and a misunderstood character.

 

[Crothian]

We had our first session. I did more with the traveling and introducing the NPCs and explaining the different ports that were visited. This was used to help foreshadow some of the things going on with the NPCs but I think the players were not paying a lot of attention to it so it will matter more.

I would have liked it if at least one player boarded at a different port but they all got on the same place. It kind of defeats how the AP brings the group together but it will work out just fine in the long run.

Our first session covers 8 days on the island. The made basecamp at the start of one of the rivers just south of one of the C2's. They have mostly explored the area north of them but have been a lot more careful and patient with the exploration then I was imaging.

I'm setting up the NPCs as both annoying and untrustworthy but helpful. Sasha is trying to get some of the NPCs abandoned because they aren't pulling their weight. Jask and Aerys have been diseased and are not doing great and can't really help out that much. Gelik has been fun to role play. Some people are Paizo site came up with jokes for them and that's been fun to use.

So far so good. It was a fun opening and the players seemed to get into it more then I was expecting.

 

[Crothian]

It took us five sessions but we did manage to get through the first book. It was pretty good but I think it would have been a better one shot module instead of the beginning of an AP. It doesn't seem to establish much of the AP, and its themes of survival are very different from the over theme of exploration that the AP presents. Yes, there are some places to explore there but it is more about surviving the experience.

Now that the party is in Eleder we are having fun with the class system especially with one PCs being a native and the other three being foreigners. Instead of the guide from the book, I'm using the guide presented in NPC Guide from Sargova as she is much more interesting to the campaign. I'm also placing her up near Bloodcove so the PCs have to track her down and it will allow me to take them on the module River into Darkness that has themes that fit well into the campaign at this time. Overall, not a well written module but I tend to pull out a few good things and have the PCs deal with it in a single session.

 

[Psion]

Anyone have a chance to run or play this yet? I'm curious what has worked and what has not.

Now that the party is in Eleder we are having fun with the class system especially with one PCs being a native and the other three being foreigners. Instead of the guide from the book, I'm using the guide presented in NPC Guide from Sargova as she is much more interesting to the campaign.

We will probably finish book 6 in the next session or two (knowing my group, two). Albeit I am using Fantasy Craft, so level was sort of irrelevant to me.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Book 1 worked really well for us.

Book 2, the beginning (up to the hermit) and the end (from Kalabuto on) worked for me, but I didn't like the whole mines/dinosaur-riding-chick thing, so I ripped that out, and put in the Indominable Fire Forest of Innenotdar from the War or the Burning Sky series. In short, I played up the "race" aspect of the competing factions and offered them a shortcut through a flaming forest, and made the devil assailing the party an agent summoned by an opposing faction.

For the ziggurat at the end of book, I used the more Indiana-jonesey variant developed by dwtempest mentioned in this thread.

Book 3 was decent, but if you play it out of the book, it can be a bit of the grind. I spruced it up a bit with some of the variant city district material mentioned over in the paizo serpent skull forums. My players were ready to go full out war with the other factions (I linked the Aspis consortium with a merchant family they crossed swords with before... which was more effective than I had hoped.) The eventually decided to go with a more low key competition with the other factions, but did eventually do away with the black scorpions (my version of the red mantis).

Book 4 I gutted... I didn't want 7 dungeon crawls worth of dysfunctional characters. I made 2 vaults enough to get the parts they needed, and the adventure was mostly about the gorilla king and the intellect devourer.

Book 5 and Book 6 I more or less ran out-of-the-book as-is, only trimming out some extraneous encounters.

I am planning on changing the final scene. I think Paizo APs love the boss fight too much. I think I like the "prevented deed" variant a lot more, instead of FORCING the group to grapple directly with the avatar. Instead, I plan to have them arrive just as a group of serpentfolk are ceremonially dumping the skull into the pit. Players can try to stop them, and if need be, chase the skull to the bottom of the pit and try to stop the avatar from re-attaching its head. That sounds much more fun to me than the grindy-looking battle in the book.

If they fail, they have time before the avatar gains full strength, and can try to overcome it a la Conan in the last battle scene of Conan the Destroyer.