D&D 5E Paizo's 'The Abomination Vaults' Pathinder AP Coming to 5E

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!

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

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.

I run one, it works fabulously, we just follow the Ben Robbins protocol of level increasing as you get away from the starting position (we create themed 'zones') with well telegraphed pockets of extreme danger. We also spotlighted the game's chase rules as a system for adjudicating retreats, and are up front about level.

We also made leveling run off treasure.

 

[edosan]

I'm excited for this (although I'm with everyone else in wishing they had started with Rise of the Runelords first) - hopefully this will be the start of a trend.

 

[Retreater]

Because it's nice to be able to finish a fight in less than three weeks.

I've been running test encounters using "boss monsters" for 5th level characters in about 30 minutes on average. VTT automation really helps me.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Respectfully, if that's you experience, someone is doing something wrong. PF2 fights in my games resolve faster than PF1/3.5 most of the time and that's using pawns, mats, crit & fumble cards.

I was talking about PF1. I have no experience whatsoever of PF2. I gave up on Pathfinder once I discovered 5e suited me much better.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

It's kind of unfair for me to complain about combat speed. I cut my gaming teeth on the BECM rules, so any combat sequence that takes more than 10 minutes is going to feel sluggish and frustrating...and that applies to every game edition since.

That's my problem, though, not the game system(s).

As an off topic note - I spent the last 30+ years with HERO as my primary system, so for me a combat that comes in under 45 minutes or an hour is doing really well. lol.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

...anyway,

How cool is it that you can play Pathfinder's The Abomination Vaults adventure path in 5E D&D? I think it's pretty cool, and I hope it shows a demand for more Pathfinder-5E crossovers in the future. I like the Pathfinder campaign setting and the world of Golarion, and I like the rules mechanics of 5E...so it would be nice to have products that save me the trouble of combining the two.

(If there was a 100% reaction, or even better a 1000% reaction, that would be nice here on EN.)

But that all being said - I am excited for this, and look forward to more of Paizo's APs to be collected into big ol' books.

BUT - a lot of the classic PF1E APs were 6 volume books and were 72-96 pages long. So that's ~450 pps or something. Which might make them US$70-80 books. Ooof.

I see though that now they are putting out 3 volume sets - I don't know how many pages those are though...

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Tactics play a large part and Pathfinder gives them scads of meaningful options, both in player abilities as well as via the 3-action economy and PF combat tactics. Sometimes they can punch above their weight class, sometimes their foes have the edge.

How does this work in your games? Are you refering to punching above their weight by "bypassing traditional encounter mechanics" through DM adjudicated outcomes of creative strategies?

Or through good tactics, player skill at using abilities, synergies between abilities, etc.? I do find there is a learning curve with PF2e, but also find that the default enounter guidlines assume a bit of player skill and not just say going up to an above level monster and trying to whack it 3 times every turn. So seems like well oiled teams can punch above their weight a little but not so much that it will stretch the sweet spot too far. Of course, there is always signposting and running away which is fair enough in its own right.

 

[payn]

(If there was a 100% reaction, or even better a 1000% reaction, that would be nice here on EN.)

But that all being said - I am excited for this, and look forward to more of Paizo's APs to be collected into big ol' books.

BUT - a lot of the classic PF1E APs were 6 volume books and were 72-96 pages long. So that's ~450 pps or something. Which might make them US$70-80 books. Ooof.

I see though that now they are putting out 3 volume sets - I don't know how many pages those are though...

Can always go PDF.

 

[humble minion]

BUT - a lot of the classic PF1E APs were 6 volume books and were 72-96 pages long. So that's ~450 pps or something. Which might make them US$70-80 books. Ooof.

From memory, the actual books were that long, but only around half or a little more was the actual adventure. There was also fiction, monsters, a gazetteer of a significant place in the adventure, a bit of general Golarion setting background etc. Some of that would need to be included in a compiled hardback, but by no means all. Also, PF stat blocks are much bigger and consume more space than 5e stat blocks, especially at high level (in PF1 at least). So there’d probably be a fair bit of capacity to save page count there.

Though on the other hand, PF APs generally assume you have access to original PF monsters in the various PF bestiaries, the expansion rules from things like Ultimate Intrigue, background on Golarion and its gods from the worldbook etc etc. Paizo cross-sell products HARD. If they’re dipping their toe in 5e, they’d need to convert a lot of that stuff over and make it available, which is more pagecount somewhere, whether in the AP itself, or whether in a completely different 5e product. I suspect that’s why this particular AP was chosen - if it’s all in a dungeon, it’s a closed single-location environment that’s easily portable to other campaign worlds, and from what I can read in the summary, unlike many other APs it isn’t tied tightly to Golarion’s gods, history, or geography. So it’s a handy trial balloon.

 

[Inchoroi]

(If there was a 100% reaction, or even better a 1000% reaction, that would be nice here on EN.)

But that all being said - I am excited for this, and look forward to more of Paizo's APs to be collected into big ol' books.

BUT - a lot of the classic PF1E APs were 6 volume books and were 72-96 pages long. So that's ~450 pps or something. Which might make them US$70-80 books. Ooof.

I see though that now they are putting out 3 volume sets - I don't know how many pages those are though...

There is a lot that can be cut from the volumes for even things like Rise of the Runelords. Unless they keep the formatting as close to the PF2e version as possible, trimming out the various statblock calls, the hazard/traps statblocks, full statblocks in the actual text, would save quite a bit of space.

5e does monster calls by just bolding the monster's name, which usually means that that monster can be found in the SRD, and monsters that are in the back of the book usually just say in parentheses that its in Appendix ##. In addition, unless they keep all the treasure rewards the same, there will be significantly less magic items to keep track of (if they don't change the treasure, the party will end up blinged on so many magic items). Like just the wand of heal in Book 1 of Abomination Vaults has no 5e equivalent; I'd probably end up throwing in a few more potions of healing to compensate for its loss, if even that. In my own conversions for Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne, I threw out literally all the treasure as printed unless it was plot required.

I just counted: there's 59 magic items in Book 1 of Abomination Vaults.