Shackled City, experences?

[KenM]

I just picked up the Shackled City hardcover. I plan on running it. Some people I know say its very tough. What are peoples thoughts, experences with it?

 

[GlassJaw]

This has been a lot discussed previously so I'll sum up some of my experiences:

It's good, old school D&D.
Lots of dungeons.
It can be tough. I recommend at least 5 players and at least 32 point-buy.
It's LONG.
Use the Paizo boards - they are a HUGE help.

 

[KenM]

I was just looking on the Pazio site but I can't find the link for the handouts for shackled city as a PDF, can anyone help? They're site is hard to navagate.

 

[DragonLancer]

I'll be starting it later in the year but my players are looking forward to it.

 

[James Jacobs]

I was just looking on the Pazio site but I can't find the link for the handouts for shackled city as a PDF, can anyone help? They're site is hard to navagate.

Go to http://paizo.com/dungeon/products/books; the link you're looking for is in the fourth paragraph.

 

[Sunderstone]

Im running it currently, we are getting ready to enter the bath house in "Drakthar's Way".

We had a tpk (vs. Kazmojen) originally at the end of "Life's Bazaar" waaaaay back, this new party has rescued the two surviving members from the old party. One member of the old party has joined the new group and we continued on from there.

Great campaign, it's definately my favorite d20 product released to date.


Some helpful hints...
If you are running with a small group, the four core classes are probably optimal. Make sure the party's cleric doesnt take a prestige class that sacrifices spell progression. Also having a Rogue with maxxed out ranks in Use Magic Device is excellent (for Wands of Cure ____).
Sleep and Color Spray are great spells for the early levels.

 

[Lazybones]

The Shackled City is a lot of fun but it's a slaughterhouse. Just as a heads-up, there are several places where you get bad guys that can easily TPK an unlucky or unprepared party. For example, there's a place in "Zenith Trajectory" where the party (6th level at this point) is hit by 3 EL9 encounters in rapid succession. There's also a lot of dragons (always a potential TPK if run well). Finally, at the high end there's lots of bad guys that can use blasphemy, and who will almost always be above the party level (no save, and SR unlikely to be of much good).

I'd highly recommend it, but with either a base party of 6 or with +1 the suggested level for each module. I haven't seen the hardcover yet but I understand they inserted another short adventure to help mitigate this issue.

Also, in my fictional treatment of TSC I kept the pace fast (and in the modules there are often long stretches where the party doesn't have access to stores/cities/R&R). I'd recommend adding some breaks for item creation and/or visiting "Sassarine", as suggested in the campaign.

 

[KenM]

The new adventure they put in is right after "Life's Bazzar." So I think they put it in that early to help you level sooner. They also have all the feats, monsters, ect that are not in the core books listed in the back.

 

[Psion]

You guys talking about how rough it is are erroding my reluctance to use the "1 free ECL" variant from AGMG for this game.

 

[tetsujin28]

Well, there's always the fact of stupid player reluctance to run away from anything.