Paizo is set to release one of its adventure paths--The Abomination Vaults--for D&D 5E in November. The AP will be compiled as a hardcover and retail for $59.99. There will also be a Pathfinder 2E version of the hardcover.
The 3-part adventure path was originally released for Pathfinder 2E in early 2021, and is a big dungeon crawl adventure.
When the mysterious Gauntlight, an eerie landlocked lighthouse, glows with baleful light, the people of Otari know something terrible is beginning. Evil stirs in the depths of the Abomination Vaults, a sprawling dungeon where a wicked sorcerer attempted to raise an army of monsters hundreds of years ago. The town's newest heroes must venture into a sprawling dungeon filled with beasts and traps to prevent a spiteful spellcaster from rising again!
This complete compilation of the original Adventure Path campaign has been adapted to the newest version of the world’s oldest RPG. You’ve heard about the quality and depth of Pathfinder campaigns for years—now explore the Abomination Vaults yourself without having to learn a new game system!
If you're in the stairs getting ready to face the Void Critter and needing to leave the dungeon to get the items to take down the magical barrier to get to the next level down, I think that's a good end for the first episode.
there is some in-dungeon intrigue - through the assignment of "side quests". if you are like most groups, you'll kill the monster before you talk to them. so, weaving these side plots will take some work - but its there
Yes, and that "kill first, ask questions later" approach is rewarded by the system mechanics. If you're coming out of exploration mode with your fighters ready for battle with shields raised, your rogue already hidden and ready to sneak attack flat-footed opponents, etc., then stopping to chat with the monsters is going to hamstring you during the battle. And with the "tight balance" of PF2, the encounter math assumes you don't waste actions, so you MUST strike when you're ready. The drawback is that the paragraphs of background and motivation for NPCs that the GM has is essentially wasted space that can't be conveyed to the party.
the size feels good for a "mega" dungeon. but for 5e players not used to PF2 adventures. dungeon's and levels feel "samey" because Paizo wants to sell physical battlemaps, so dungeon levels need to fit inside the physical dimensions of battlemaps
The scale of the rooms, hallways, and distance between them is so tiny it's ludicrous. You can run the entire dungeon in "Encounter mode." Fights are usually a single Stride action apart. There is almost no point in going into Exploration mode.
The size of the default Paizo map design should be doubled for PF2. You can't fit a party and a suitable number of enemies in a single room. You don't have enemies outside of range of the caster, so they never have to move, and if your caster is always in the hallway behind the fighter who is blocking the only 5 ft entrance into the room, there's never a danger posed to the back rank. There is no room for any creative movement, tactics like using reach or ranged weapons.
Maybe they should put in a series of 5x5 monster closets - they could fit in more encounters that way.
Each level has a feel to it and a theme - mostly clearly communicated - there are libraries, and personal studies, and fighting pits, etc. levels all describe at the beginning the "feel" of each level. playing up to those will help greatly give the dungeon life.
You don't know until you open the door, though. Like, if you know that flesh-eating ghouls are on the other side of the door, describe some blood smear on the door, a stray finger on the ground, the smell of blood in the air, the crunching of bone heard on the other side. Without connecting the room encounters to the doors and hallways, it gives the feel of having distinct "monster hotels" and few links between the encounter areas. This is stuff that can (and should) be added by the GM, but having some clues in there for the GM to describe to the players would be helpful.
monster placement mostly make sense. this isn't "old school" where you have room a with orcs and room b with a dragon, and the dragon never uses orcs as a food supply . there has been thought given to ecology and explaining why certain monsters are in certain areas - especially those that stand apart from the level's meta theme. nothing felt overly contrived.
The contrived part of it is that each monster dwells in its "monster hotel." The encounters and occupants do not connect at all. They are all trapped in stasis waiting for the characters to arrive. It's not a living environment. They do not interact to what the characters do. Even if the party leaves and returns, do they restock the dungeon? Are they on alarm? Do they retreat to another area? Do they make any preparations? Is there a time-limit where if the party returns to town after every fight that things might get worse? The answer is "no" to all of these questions.
this really is a get in, kick the door down, slay the beasts, take the loot adventure. its unabashed about it. the game starts with you at the door and its up to the GM to weave any more story into the game that they see fit. if you or your players do not like get in, kick the door down, slay the beasts, take the loot adventures - this will not work for you. like, at all.
For that style of play, I have HeroQuest. Beer and pretzels sessions have their place, but it's odd to see this one held up as the crown jewel of PF2. The idea is fun, but do you want to do this for 10 levels? Maybe 6 months to a year of play?
I think that had Abomination Vaults been presented as a "big dungeon adventure" and not as a self-contained Adventure Path campaign, maybe I wouldn't hold it to such scrutiny. As a big dungeon that you can go in, kill stuff, get treasure, etc., it's not bad. As the focal point of an entire campaign it is samey, tedious, and unrewarding.
I don't think Pathfinder 2 works all that well with large-scale sandboxes meant for a large span of levels, because of the way numbers scale with level. A single monster 3 levels above a party will wipe the floor with them unless they get lucky or prepare just right for the encounter. The first AP makes PCs fight a level 7 monster when they're at 4th level, and the first time we did so we got absolutely slaughtered and had to run for our lives. A level 4 martial will have an attack bonus of about +11 against the monster's AC of 25, an AC of about 22 against it's attack bonus of +17 (meaning it crits on a 15+), and a caster's save DC is about 20 against its saves between +12 and +17.
This is unlike 5e where, at least once you're into tier 2, you can handle most things the game throws at you. You might need rest afterward, but you can punch far above your nominal weight class.
The second adventure in the Age of Ashes AP is a hexcrawl, but it's only for level 5-8 or so. Also, the impression I got (from the player side) was that it was definitely weighted so that the encounters nearer our "base" were lower level than those farther away.
The PF2 Gamemaster guide has guidelines on removing the level scaling aspect and just use proficiency levels.
It a little janky in that you would have to strip out the level from every monster attack and defense and skill. But it looks like it can be done, and it might create a more wider bound between levels.
The PF2 Gamemaster guide has guidelines on removing the level scaling aspect and just use proficiency levels.
It a little janky in that you would have to strip out the level from every monster attack and defense and skill. But it looks like it can be done, and it might create a more wider bound between levels.
Yeah Id strongly consider this if I was to run a megadungeon and/or sandbox in PF2. Foundry has a setting in the PF2 module that automates this process so its pretty easy to implement (in VTT).
I can't comment on "running them by the book", since I tend to convert them to a lighter-weight system, which means I do my best to remove all of the padding that's necessary for the level grind. Which can be a tricky business with figuring out what is and isn't actually relevant, but tends to involve removing a lot of combat.
This, combined with the page count hobgoblin. I mean, you could stretch out the same number of encounters over a bigger map, but that would require more space for the map plus probably some "filler" in between the encounters. And we don't have room for that, because we need to get 10 levels' worth of XP and treasure fitted into ~180 pages.
It kind of feels like Paizo has painted themselves into a corner with PF2 adventure paths because of conflicting goals:
Either 3 parts covering 10 levels or 6 parts covering 20.
A new adventure path starts with the GenCon release, so you can't mess too much with the pacing.
One part per month.
96 pages per part, about 2/3 of which is the actual adventure and 1/3 is other material that's thematically related but not necessarily adventure-relevant (this split is necessary because that allows them to have one person write the adventure and another the support material). I've seen some Paizo freelancers comment on how this pace is pretty tough to maintain.
Given these restraints, I think the best change they could do would be to make change the APs to have 4 parts per 10 levels or 8 per 20, and do one small and one large AP per year. That would give the adventures more room to "breathe" while still maintaining the publishing schedule of one book per month.
Most respondents here have commented about it being a "classic" big dungeon adventure. The only negative comment came from someone who actually ran in in PF2, back in post #38.
If I remember correctly there were some additional positive posts in the PF2 forum, but I don't remember anything specific. I will see if I can find some.
That “back room dealing” is straight from Prof DM last year when he admitted to starting the rumor!!! He started it and people latched onto it. I got kicked off his Facebook group after he admitted to making it up for clicks and telling him he was no better than the QAnon influencers then. And here we are… people still believe WOTC might be buying Paizo.
So a guy with a small YouTube channels speculating about the RPG industry is, to you, the same as that looney bin of a fringe conspiracy group ruining lives and getting people killed? Holy…wow, dude. That’s an out there hot take you have. No wonder he booted you.
