Scales of War - Feedback and Advice

[Herschel]

I've been having a lot of fun with it through heroic (just about to ding Paragon). I like the way the modules have been loosely connected rather than feel like the story is railroaded. I don't want to stay on the same story every freakin' time. It would be like the X-Files having every stroy be just about the Black Oil. The NPCs are pretty solid, Rufus is a lot of fun (as is his butler, Rodney the zombie) and it works pretty well.

The backgrounds are a nice touch and work well within the story and give some minor benefits like the rest. Some of the maps are quite awesome, especially the when facing a certain band of orcs to keep them from coming through the tunnels.

 

[sunrisekid]

If anyone has been running the adventures since the release of MM3 or MV, can you comment on whether monsters printed from a couple years back are still suitably balanced for recent character building options? (eg, PH3 or Essentials)

 

[Herschel]

Yeah, they're still fine. As always, you can adjust monsters to taste but they're still significantly nasty.

 

[chompers]

I'm currently DMing the SoW campaign, PCs are approaching level 9. I'm reallly enjoying it, and I'm pretty sure they are as well.

I'm going to have to echo what everyone else has basically said: it's a good campaign IF you take the time to patch it up Particularly the monsters, which obviously need their hp dropped and damage increased.

I notice someone mentioned above that the campaign is combat heavy and roleplay light. It totally is, but I saw this as a HUGE bonus, as it means there's plenty of room to customise roleplaying/story encounters relevant to your PCs. I got all of my players to provide me with the following info:
1. A brief description of their PCs background.
2. Something about their past the rest of the party doesn't know (if poss).
3. Their PCs main goal in life.
I used these to structure subplots for each character that weave through the campaign.

I'll have a look back over the adventures and see if I can remember anything that stood out as needing changing when I played through.

 

[LightPhoenix]

If I were starting over, the big change I would make is to not run the first adventure. It doesn't really add anything to the adventure, and Brindol rapidly gets ditched for Overlook as a base of operations. In fact, if I hadn't read ahead, it's very much a DM trap - you might think to flesh out Brindol, but Overlook is the base and it's not introduced until the second adventure. It's almost like they changed their mind about the setup.

 

[Firebeetle]

You need to consider your criteria for a campaign. A lot has already been said. Some great encounters individually, some good adventures that are heavy on combat and light on role-playing, and a very disjointed overall campaign.

My son is currently running SoW for his buddies. The campaign is ideal for this, the linear structure and combat heavy adventure is perfect to keep 13 year olds on track. It's good D&D fun. However, the problems cannot simply be fine tuned away. To improve the Adventure Path experience, you may need some serious rewriting. There is a lot of support though. Besides the aforementioned blog and wiki, there is the DM Support Group and there's a miniatures list somewhere but I can't find it.

I'm thinking about cherry picking encounters out of it myself.

 

[Netherstorm]

I just finished running the Scales of War path. I loved it and my players loved it. I agree that the heroic tier is very disjointed. And yeah the roleplaying is left up to you, but it is not too hard to set up IMO. Overlook is an awesome city and there's nothing stopping your PCs from exploring it and interacting with the people there.

My group also loved Rufus the necromancer. I had him give some of my PCs some of the body alterations from Open Grave (specifically the skeletal burning hands that shoot mini-fireballs).

Things you can do to make it seem more like a connected story:

- Foreshadow the connection between general zithiruun and Sarshan in Umbraforge

- Foreshadow the githzerai at Akma'ad (from Haven of bitter glass) in Den of the destroyer

- Connect the elemental rift (in lost mines of karak) to.. something! Maybe the keening delve (which comes into play wayyyy down the road, in Test of Fire).

- Create an actual reason for Cachlain to want the incunabulum primeval in the mountainroot temple (Cachlain is featured in the Stone-Skinned King).

- Create a gimmick for the weapons Sarshan is selling. They're made of blood chaos ore, i believe. So whenever you have bad guys who Sarshan has sold weapons to, give them blood chaos weapons and give them an extra kewl power.

- Also, when the pcs meet the "old man with canaries" in Lost Mines, you might want to have him do something that connects more with later on. Maybe have him hand one of the PCs one of the canaries as a one use item (the canary item is also given to the PCs in the final adventure - it turns into a gold dragon. You could give the PCs this item as something to use when they're in really big trouble. Or just because it would be cool to have a pc riding a gold dragon fighting zithiruun, who rides an undead dragon in the final fight of heroic tier).

As for which adventures are the best.... IMO:

Bordrins Watch: Just awesome encounters all the way through. The Nexus is one of the best encounters in 4e.

Beyond the Mottled Tower: There's a lot of really cool stuff in here. There's a fight with two green dragons, there's a fight on floating earthbergs in a sea of lava, and of course there's the epic showdown with Sarshan.

Haven of the Bitter Glass: Airship fights with githyanki riding red dragons, ferreting out the githyanki spy, the first "roleplaying encounter", great adventure. Probably the best 4e adventure out there.

Tyranny of Souls: This one is just incredible. You lead a revolution against the githyanki emporer!

Legacy of Io: This one has a couple problems, but overall it is a hell of a lot of fun. Hestavar is a really cool city. And the final fight(s) in this are really fun.

Last Breath of the Dragon Queen: A dungeon full of dragons! And a fight with a god! You will have to tweak the encounters, but it will be worth it.

 

[The Antra]

Thanks for the great input, everyone!

I´ve been reading through the heroic tier adventures and two things come to mind immediately:

1 - It seems that the adventures were really not planned through. The first one creates an anticipation regarding the hobgoblins (and the Red Hand) that goes away at the second adventure, which moves 180o degrees toward an orc invasion. From there on, even the orc invasion fades to the background...

2 - There is too much of an effort to create a living, breathing setting while the adventures in themselves fall to cliches and vanilla situations. I believe there are way better "cities" in which to place the characters (with much more story seeds and background) like Neverwinter, or Sharn, or Solamnia...

It seems that everything really comes together at Paragon tier. I´ll be reading on and will try and re-write the first chapters of the AP. Netherstorm had great tips on this, although right now I´m still trying to mesh the first three or four installments together.

Once again, thanks for the great input, guys! Keep´em coming!