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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Retreater" data-source="post: 8590829" data-attributes="member: 42040">I can expand on my “bad review” of Abomination Vaults, so you know that I have given it a lot of thought and maybe trust my experience a little more.Here are issues that came up in Book 1 (we got to the end of Book 1, fwiw).Motivation[SPOILER]The reason to investigate the dungeon is extremely flimsy. Your only reason is that local town eccentric has a strange feeling about the place and asks you to investigate it. She has no idea what’s going on, why you should go, no motivation to offer (payment, reward, etc.) It’s the weakest introduction I could imagine for an Adventure Path except for just starting the heroes on the doorstep of the dungeon and telling them to “have fun” – which is the suggested approach given in the adventure. As it is, the writers wait until basically the end of Book 1 (one-third of the way into the campaign) before suggesting who the villain is, what her motivation is, etc.[/SPOILER]Connection to Otari[SPOILER]There is very little to connect the dungeon to Otari, and it’s a missed opportunity. There is a guy who is looking for books that he will buy from you, and that’s about it. It needs more. Put in a kidnapped villager who needs to be rescued. A valuable item that has been stolen and needs to be recovered. Or – if you want to make this f’ing epic – you put in a cult to Belcorra operating in Otari. You make them responsible for reawakening her. You let the party start uncovering a mystery that connects them to the lighthouse, realizing early on that the cult is operating there and that they have their sights on Otari. That gives them more motivation than going through a monster hotel fighting monsters in rooms every 30 feet. There was space to put this in the adventure if Paizo were to cut out a handful of meaningless encounters designed to – I guess – meet an arbitrary treasure and XP quota.[/SPOILER]Layout[SPOILER]The second level of the dungeon is supposed to be at the water level of the moat surrounding the lighthouse. This isn’t clear at all from looking at the maps. It also doesn’t line up correctly because you have the boat house (on Level 1) at the water level, but then the basement of the boat house (Level 2) also on the water level.[/SPOILER]Dungeon Scale[SPOILER]Don’t let the name “megadungeon” fool you: the dungeon is very small, but extremely dense with content. You have 5-foot-wide corridors that impact marching order. An abundance of 20x20 rooms that guarantee you can’t maneuver properly (and some of the monsters don’t even have room to use their powers). Then you have the issue of having 20 feet of hallway between encounter “boxes” – and there’s no realistic reason that monster allies wouldn’t come to each other’s aid (but you can’t combine encounters in PF2) OR that if they aren’t allies that they wouldn’t have killed each other already.Like before, I think a lot of this comes down to trying to reach an arbitrary treasure and XP quota. There are too many “encounter boxes” – you open a door to a 20 x 20 room and fight the monster; rest to regain focus, repair shields, treat wounds; go to the next room; then finally after doing that six or so times, you make a casual 15-minute walk back to town (with no chance of random encounters) to rest up fully. Repeat this 4-5 times and you’ve beaten the first book.[/SPOILER]I am considering running Abomination Vaults again in PF2 for a second group of players. I think they’ll enjoy it, especially after I make tweaks based on the issues I’ve discovered.If I do, I’ll be changing the motivation by adding a prelude to get the party involved. I will make the first few levels of the dungeon more thematic. I will cut out encounters that seem to be there to take up space, so the dungeon doesn’t seem absolutely “packed to the gills.”</blockquote>

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