D&D 5E (2014) PotA Worth Buying?

[Zardnaar]

OK, that's one of the two issues we're discussing here (the other being reviews). You seem to agree with me the same standard should be applied to both. Mysteriously, I've never seen you claim Paizo outsources until now, though we've talked about this issue many times before.



WOTC also produces stuff in house, and I am applying the same standard people apply to Paizo. We don't have have a list of personnel printed for us from either company - all we really have are company credits in books, and word of mouth estimates. According to credits, WOTC has 29 employees right now. It's not admin staff - they say what their job is in the credits, and we're not talking accounting and HR and legal and that sort of stuff - it's all editing and writing and art and production etc.. I don't know why it's constantly an uphill battle on this issue. It's 29 people in the credits. Why is that in dispute? Why can't people agree that if WOTC lists 29 people in the credits (not for another company, that's a second section in the credits, this is just for WOTC), then it's fair to say they have 29 people working on D&D?



I disagree on the quantity of content Paizo has produced in this past year (it's somewhat similar to the quantity WOTC produced), but regardless I still am not seeing what this has to do with the topic. Again, it would not matter if Paizo maybe 100,000 products a year and WOTC made only 1. It's still never been connected to this topic. The quantity isn't connected to whether the label "outsourced" should be applied to one and not the other, nor is it related to whether reviews should or should not be used. Why do you keep bringing this topic up? What is your point relat



Zard - why do you keep talking about this stuff in this thread? What thread do you think you are in, or how does it relate to the topic? I am really straining to figure out what your point is, unless you just want to change the topic?

You were the one qho went off the deep end about outsourcing stuff. As you mentioned I barely mention it as it is mostly a non issue for me.

You asked why Paizo gets away with it. I'm not 100% sure but they have produced stuff in house where aftet the core books were done 100% of the wotc stuff had been outsourced. And Paizo has more variety. Thats just a IMHO.

 

[aramis erak]

Well you can't get worse than HotDQ. What a ****-stain of an adventure. Wasted my money... >_> PotA sounds like a good, classic dungeon delve with some mini-sandbox stuff for good measure.

I'd say, from a boredom standpoint, Horde is actually quite well done. Having run chapters 1-6, each chapter was different in tone, and lead to new and different approaches being needed. It has a few balance issues, but almost all coincidental with initial release of game rules modules do.

The caravan journey in it was actually a great lot of fun to run.

 

[aramis erak]

It's actually two APs a year, which I'm sure you already knew.

Paizo's non-AP module output has dropped to almost nothing. (And then there's the OP adventures, which Paizo and Wizards produce about the same amount of per year).

How much space do Wizards adventures save on statblocks, btw?

Cheers!

The typical WotC statblock runs 1/6 page to 1/4 page, with a few hitting half a page. I don't play Pathfinder to know for sure, but I recall seeing half page to full page, and have heard of 2-3 page statblocks in PF.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I find the adventure pretty solid and definitely worth buying. Is it perfect? Nope. But I think even a mediocre DM could make it shine with the right tweaks. They don't even need to be drastic tweaks.

And if you didn't want to run the adventure, there is plenty to strip mine and use how you see fit.

 

[delericho]

As the title says is that adventure worth buying?

For what it's worth, I finished my read-through of this adventure yesterday, and my answer is "yes". It's not a classic, but it is a distinct improvement on "Tyranny of Dragons" and it's much better than 3e's "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil".

I remain a little surprised at how little of the book is actually given over to the 'main' adventure (chapters 3, 4, and 5, which is a bit under half the page count). That said, the supporting material is generally good stuff, and especially the two intro adventures in chapter 6 (designed to get 1st level PCs to 3rd level, the recommended starting point for the 'main' adventure). I wasn't quite so enamoured of the side-quests in chapter 6, though.

I also strongly suspect that if you're the sort of DM who is happy to add his own sidequests and supporting adventures, then this book could make the basis of a very satisfying campaign.

I hope that helps.

 

[Zardnaar]

Probably not going to buy it due to the NZ dollar losing 25% of its value over the last year + postage means it would be close to a $100 book here. Might see if I can find it for cheap on a local auction site.

 

[delericho]

Probably not going to buy it due to the NZ dollar losing 25% of its value over the last year + postage means it would be close to a $100 book here.

Ouch. And I thought it was bad enough not getting the lovely Amazon US discounts.

 

[Zardnaar]

Ouch. And I thought it was bad enough not getting the lovely Amazon US discounts.

Could be worse at one point I paid $27 an issue for Dragon ($20+ USD). Amazon used to have free postage sales and I would get 10-13 books at once but they have stopped doing that for some strange reason. It was nice when the dollar was up around 75-85 cents vs the USD biut not t is getting closer to 60 cents after the bank takes a cut.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

As the title says is that adventure worth buying? It seems to have good reviews here but so did HotDQ and that has plummeted from 80% down to 53%. And I thought HotDQ was out right bad.

HotDQ may have knocked Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil out as my all time least favourite adventure.

 

[delericho]

HotDQ may have knocked Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil out as my all time least favourite adventure.

You might want to try "Scourge of the Howling Horde". Although by 'try' I perhaps mean "avoid at all costs".