Thomas Percy
First Post
What is Lloth: a demon, an aspect, an avatar, the godness or something else?
got my Expedition to the Demonweb Pits (mild spoilers)
- Thread starter Bad Paper
- Start date
whew I am tired
Today is my son's six-month birthday, which doesn't mean that we've been partying hard, but means that my god I haven't slept through the night in half a year. My perpetual fatigue is why I've only been able to read about 15% of the book so far. A year ago I would have been nearly finished with this thing by now. I like it!
What I like is that it's so tight. This is not targetted at novice DMs. Baur and Kestrel are very aware that everyone here will run this thing differently, so the balance of who an NPC is vs. the function of that NPC in the larger story is well-crafted. I can practically see where mattcolville will rip the seam in this story and sew his campaign into it. When Obergnom feels like giving the PCs a kick in the pants, the skeleton of the story won't be disrupted at all by whatever he wants to do.
To give you an idea, there is a list of ambushes you can throw in "...to enliven an otherwise overly chatty game session with combat." They certainly know their audience.
One of the big perks is that Sigil and Zelatar get moderately fleshed out. I've read the Manual of the Planes and Planar Handbook, but none of the Planescape stuff, so most of this stuff is new to me. I hate having to build a city on the fly.
As for comparison to the Harrowing, hmm. One thing that jumps out at me is that again they are using practically the same yochlol encounter that they lifted from Monte Cook out of the Harrowing and plunked almost without change into Fiendish Codex I. {Sean, don't cheat} They put a little more flavor and variety to it, but I feel like yochlol should be practically defined by their flexibility, and having them always show up like this (so...sedentary) kinda burns me.
The Demonweb comes across as possibly a tiny bit tamer than in the Harrowing, if only because the ELs are more like 10-12 instead of 13-15. If that bugs you, just double the number of whatever is appearing. There's certainly enough variety to keep things interesting. Expedition... makes use of the richer tapestry of monsters than Cook had with which to work in the Harrowing. And of course you can use Cook's suggestions of how to make the Harrowing more harrowing in Expedition... (e.g. summon tanar'ri always works).
mattcolville, as I hinted above, yes you can use this in your campaign, and I think it would be a great twist for both you and your players, since the hidden machinations of the Major Players make this adventure appear to be something other than what it is. Sorry for the roundabout bit, but I am trying to avoid big spoilers. This would be a refreshing change from what your players currently expect "ho hum, we have to go kill some Drow" to "here is a secret mission to the Demonweb that may undermine Lolth in a Big Way and make her pay for turning her attention to Oerth."
The prestige classes are called the Demonwrecker and the Jaunter:
Demonwrecker is for divine casters (full progression) who are irritated by demons' damage reduction and spell resistance. This class blows through them.
Jaunter requires Spring Attack and some planar knowledge and experience. It isn't a combat class per se, though, and Spring Attack is required just for some weird flavor, like "Jaunters just can't stand still! ha ha ha!" Scouts are an obvious choice. You get "travel power" that you can spend on benign transposition, baleful transposition, dimension door, teleport, plane shift, freedom of movement, as spell-like or supernatural abilities. These are not spells.
There is a legacy armor and a legacy weapon (I was wrong in a previous post). There is also the suggestion of bringing in two legacy items from Weapons of Legacy, if you're into that sort of thing.
OK, it's time for me to not get another night's sleep.
Today is my son's six-month birthday, which doesn't mean that we've been partying hard, but means that my god I haven't slept through the night in half a year. My perpetual fatigue is why I've only been able to read about 15% of the book so far. A year ago I would have been nearly finished with this thing by now. I like it!
What I like is that it's so tight. This is not targetted at novice DMs. Baur and Kestrel are very aware that everyone here will run this thing differently, so the balance of who an NPC is vs. the function of that NPC in the larger story is well-crafted. I can practically see where mattcolville will rip the seam in this story and sew his campaign into it. When Obergnom feels like giving the PCs a kick in the pants, the skeleton of the story won't be disrupted at all by whatever he wants to do.
To give you an idea, there is a list of ambushes you can throw in "...to enliven an otherwise overly chatty game session with combat." They certainly know their audience.
One of the big perks is that Sigil and Zelatar get moderately fleshed out. I've read the Manual of the Planes and Planar Handbook, but none of the Planescape stuff, so most of this stuff is new to me. I hate having to build a city on the fly.
As for comparison to the Harrowing, hmm. One thing that jumps out at me is that again they are using practically the same yochlol encounter that they lifted from Monte Cook out of the Harrowing and plunked almost without change into Fiendish Codex I. {Sean, don't cheat} They put a little more flavor and variety to it, but I feel like yochlol should be practically defined by their flexibility, and having them always show up like this (so...sedentary) kinda burns me.
The Demonweb comes across as possibly a tiny bit tamer than in the Harrowing, if only because the ELs are more like 10-12 instead of 13-15. If that bugs you, just double the number of whatever is appearing. There's certainly enough variety to keep things interesting. Expedition... makes use of the richer tapestry of monsters than Cook had with which to work in the Harrowing. And of course you can use Cook's suggestions of how to make the Harrowing more harrowing in Expedition... (e.g. summon tanar'ri always works).
mattcolville, as I hinted above, yes you can use this in your campaign, and I think it would be a great twist for both you and your players, since the hidden machinations of the Major Players make this adventure appear to be something other than what it is. Sorry for the roundabout bit, but I am trying to avoid big spoilers. This would be a refreshing change from what your players currently expect "ho hum, we have to go kill some Drow" to "here is a secret mission to the Demonweb that may undermine Lolth in a Big Way and make her pay for turning her attention to Oerth."
The answer is "something else." That in itself is a relief, though you have opportunity to slay avatars of Graz'zt, Obox-Ob, Yeenoghu, and Demogorgon, as well as some ambassadors of other demonic powers.Thomas Percy said:
The prestige classes are called the Demonwrecker and the Jaunter:
Demonwrecker is for divine casters (full progression) who are irritated by demons' damage reduction and spell resistance. This class blows through them.
Jaunter requires Spring Attack and some planar knowledge and experience. It isn't a combat class per se, though, and Spring Attack is required just for some weird flavor, like "Jaunters just can't stand still! ha ha ha!" Scouts are an obvious choice. You get "travel power" that you can spend on benign transposition, baleful transposition, dimension door, teleport, plane shift, freedom of movement, as spell-like or supernatural abilities. These are not spells.
There is a legacy armor and a legacy weapon (I was wrong in a previous post). There is also the suggestion of bringing in two legacy items from Weapons of Legacy, if you're into that sort of thing.
OK, it's time for me to not get another night's sleep.
Last edited:
James Heard
Explorer
So...how integral is Sigil in this? I mean, if I someone (perhaps me) always thought that Planescape was really truly annoying and didn't want to have anything to do with Sigil, Planescape, or anything remotely related to inviting his players to try to push Planescape on him, would that person be better served passing on this one? It sounds like it's a really big slice of the pie, and it could be a slice of with anchovies on it for someone (perhaps me) who never got sold on anchovies with their pizza.
James Heard
Explorer
Cool, then I know where I won't be spending any money. Goodness knows, I need to find someplace.
My opinion - first skimming
I got this yesterday, purchased sight unseen from Amazon. I'm a little disappointed on the first read-through.
First, the plot is extremely convoluted. It gave me a headache just trying to understand what was going on. Your players will have to dissect layers of courtly intrigue into a tangled web of double cross, to the point where most gamers will probably just rip out their hair in frustration and quit. It's very rail-roady.
Second, most all of the areas seem like very "bare bones" descriptions of locations. Sigil is described in like 2 pages (with a few combat encounters following that). Same thing with the demon city. No real detail to help a DM bring them to life, not even decent maps or more than a handful of sample locations.
Third, the writers botch the Delve Format. Several encounters have participants listed with no stats provided, nothing more than a name, for which you'll have to hunt over 200 pages to find. This is in at least 4 of the encounters that I saw on first glance. (If you want to see an example of the Delve Format being used well, look at Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave.) Not only do the encounters not list the stats of all the participants, but there are several areas where they actually refer you to other books (still published in 3.0 rules, mind you) or leave you with nothing but to create your own high level NPCs (like 17th level cleric/fighters, etc.)
Fourth, it does not provide "everything you need." You'd better have Frostburn, Fiendish Codex I, and all the Monster Manual Supplements, and the Epic Level Handbook, because they cite these rules and use these creatures and don't provide all the information. When it says, look at "Frostburn" for a complete description, that's not good enough.
Fifth, the entire adventure structure is just off. There are so many unrelated sidequests that the campaign adventure seems like a random assortment of encounters, none of which are fully developed. Example: Pop into a plane of existence, here's a single encounter and a couple paragraphs of description -- for an entire plane of existence!
Overall, very disappointed in this book. It seems either a rushed job, or uninspired. I really recommend that if you are expecting this to be as strong of a release as Expedition to Castle Ravenloft that you seriously look through this to make sure it's what you want.
Retreater
I got this yesterday, purchased sight unseen from Amazon. I'm a little disappointed on the first read-through.
First, the plot is extremely convoluted. It gave me a headache just trying to understand what was going on. Your players will have to dissect layers of courtly intrigue into a tangled web of double cross, to the point where most gamers will probably just rip out their hair in frustration and quit. It's very rail-roady.
Second, most all of the areas seem like very "bare bones" descriptions of locations. Sigil is described in like 2 pages (with a few combat encounters following that). Same thing with the demon city. No real detail to help a DM bring them to life, not even decent maps or more than a handful of sample locations.
Third, the writers botch the Delve Format. Several encounters have participants listed with no stats provided, nothing more than a name, for which you'll have to hunt over 200 pages to find. This is in at least 4 of the encounters that I saw on first glance. (If you want to see an example of the Delve Format being used well, look at Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave.) Not only do the encounters not list the stats of all the participants, but there are several areas where they actually refer you to other books (still published in 3.0 rules, mind you) or leave you with nothing but to create your own high level NPCs (like 17th level cleric/fighters, etc.)
Fourth, it does not provide "everything you need." You'd better have Frostburn, Fiendish Codex I, and all the Monster Manual Supplements, and the Epic Level Handbook, because they cite these rules and use these creatures and don't provide all the information. When it says, look at "Frostburn" for a complete description, that's not good enough.
Fifth, the entire adventure structure is just off. There are so many unrelated sidequests that the campaign adventure seems like a random assortment of encounters, none of which are fully developed. Example: Pop into a plane of existence, here's a single encounter and a couple paragraphs of description -- for an entire plane of existence!
Overall, very disappointed in this book. It seems either a rushed job, or uninspired. I really recommend that if you are expecting this to be as strong of a release as Expedition to Castle Ravenloft that you seriously look through this to make sure it's what you want.
Retreater
