Finally Started Age of Worms

[Wolfwood2]

After many delays, my D&D group got back together and started Age of Worms last Friday. It's going to be a bi-weekly campaign, so I expect the full adventure will take well over a year to play out. Our DM has promised to mix things up a little and add his own touches on things.

We only have four PCs, which makes me a bit nervous as I've heard how tough AoW is. Still, hopefully that means we'll level up a bit faster and so be tougher when facing the challenges of the campaign. It's a somewhat unusual mix of classes:

Psion (egotist)
Beguiler (with maxed out Search and Disable Device so as to play trap monkey)
Cleric of Boccob (with Magic and Divination domains, meaning both 1st level domain spells suck)
Paladin (my character; human with Power Attack and Cleave)

Still, we seem to have all the bases covered. The first session we explored to the lantern room in the Whispering Cairn and started twisting the tomb about. We fought a raiding party of xvarts, a Wyrmling black dragon (tough!) and about 8 small centipedes.

All of this loosened enough cash that I could buy some half-plate for my dex bonus-less paladin, improving on the chain shirt I had to start off in. Lots of interesting NPCs around Diamond Lake, with potential for action from them just as much from the dungeon.

Anyway, I'm enjoying things so far. It's nice to be doing a bit of an old-school dungeon crawl for cash and glory, with the big uber-plot not yet in play. A promising start for Age of Worms.

 

[BlackMoria]

AoW will be hard going in places but it is a very enjoyable AP (at least for our group).

Make sure you bring your 'A' game to the table every session because the APs are notoriously unforgiving of suboptimal play and poor decision making. The Paizo boards have all sorts of horror stories of TPK during AoW.

Do enjoy yourself.

 

[Wolfwood2]

AoW will be hard going in places but it is a very enjoyable AP (at least for our group).

Make sure you bring your 'A' game to the table every session because the APs are notoriously unforgiving of suboptimal play and poor decision making. The Paizo boards have all sorts of horror stories of TPK during AoW.

Do enjoy yourself.

Thanks for the good thoughts! I think we have a resonably smart group of players, and I'm looking forward to the challenge. Of course, first level is always tough. There's only so much you can do to compensate for bad luck.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Do not attempt to bull your way through every encounter without ever fleeing to regroup. Unless you really like rolling up characters and/or parting with 5000 GP diamonds.

 

[BlackMoria]

I hope you don't mind a bit of advice to pass to your group. And I will try to avoid any spoilers.

The beguiler is sub-optimal for the AoW AP. In the latter half of the AP, the beguiler will be feeling ineffective due to the nature of the advesaries at that point. Just take that on trust, because I don't want to spoiler you about what those advesaries are.

I mention that because it is early enough in the game if the beguiler player wants to change. You could use a single progression 'blaster' mage instead of the beguiler.

My two coppers worth of advice.

 

[Wolfwood2]

Do not attempt to bull your way through every encounter without ever fleeing to regroup. Unless you really like rolling up characters and/or parting with 5000 GP diamonds.

That does not sound like good news for my heavy armor wearing character. Clank-slowly flee-clank-slowly flee.

I might actually be down to 15 foot move, because I think the 50 pound weight of armor puts me all the way up to a medium load with my PC's 15 strength. Do the medium load speed reduction and the heavy armor speed reduction stack?

 

[Pyrex]

Thanks for the good thoughts! I think we have a resonably smart group of players, and I'm looking forward to the challenge. Of course, first level is always tough. There's only so much you can do to compensate for bad luck.

Advance very slowly and carefully. Several segments of this campaign are murderous meat-grinders; including encounters where the PC's are outnumbered, outgunned and at a tactical disadvantage due to terrain all at the same time.

If it remotely looks like a trap, it's a trap.

Always leave yourself room for a fighting withdrawl. (or out-and-out retreat)

 

[Wolfwood2]

I hope you don't mind a bit of advice to pass to your group. And I will try to avoid any spoilers.

The beguiler is sub-optimal for the AoW AP. In the latter half of the AP, the beguiler will be feeling ineffective due to the nature of the advesaries at that point. Just take that on trust, because I don't want to spoiler you about what those advesaries are.

I mention that because it is early enough in the game if the beguiler player wants to change. You could use a single progression 'blaster' mage instead of the beguiler.

My two coppers worth of advice.

I have heard Age of Worms is, or eventually becomes, undead heavy. The player's other choices were bard or rogue, both of which would seem to have similiar difficulties. (I had to talk him out of a bard/wizard Ultimate Magus.)

I am hoping that clever strategy and careful use of spells will see the Beguiler through.

 

[Pyrex]

I might actually be down to 15 foot move, because I think the 50 pound weight of armor puts me all the way up to a medium load with my PC's 15 strength. Do the medium load speed reduction and the heavy armor speed reduction stack?

No. You use the worst of Armor Penalties or Encumberance-based pseudo-armor-penalties. They don't stack.

 

[Pyrex]

I have heard Age of Worms is, or eventually becomes, undead heavy. The player's other choices were bard or rogue, both of which would seem to have similiar difficulties. (I had to talk him out of a bard/wizard Ultimate Magus.)

I am hoping that clever strategy and careful use of spells will see the Beguiler through.

"Careful use of spells" will only get a beguiler so far when your enemies are completely immune to [Mind Affecting] spells.