Slightly over halfway through Savage Tide (some spoilers)

[Grog]

Honestly, I was disappointed that they didn't do more with the Isle of Dread. It's an iconic D&D location, but only two adventures really focused on it, and one of those was on just a small part of it. The final two Isle of Dread adventures are basically just dungeon crawls (there's a bit more to "The Lightless Depths" than that, but not much).

And if you think the enemies are complicated to run now, wait until you see the final adventures!

 

[Wycen]

Our group is not quite halfway through. We are at some point in the 5th adventure. We're trying to return the bat idol to the fangs of Camazotz.

So far we've had only 1 character death. Well, let me back up. Our first character casualty was our bard player deciding he wanted to play a rogue/wizard. His bard is technically still a member of "guild" we all belong to. The guild was for back up characters.

Our first death was a cohort while stuck in the sargasso. Unfortunately this disappointed the fighter who took the leadership feat, so when we landed he ran off into the wilds and was replaced with an Olman barbarian.

We had our first PC deaths when the gargoyles smacked us down. The rogue/wizard died as well as the two-weapon fighter. Not to mention Tavy, Urol and Amelia.

Several reincarnations later our rogue/wizard was back but the two-weapon fighter was replaced by a [yawn] clone.

We ended up hand waving the fight within the demon monkey's lair. Made our way to Farshore and hooked up with the rest of the "guild" (they were on the Blue Nixie).

When we got introduced to the Farshorians, the rogue/wizard swapped out for a psion. And we added a few new players.

Without a doubt the druid, one of the only 2 original characters/players is the star. The other original is my cleric.

I think thanks to the hand waving and some luck we've survived thus far.

 

[RangerWickett]

If I may toot my own horn, in designing War of the Burning Sky, I made an effort to make sure we didn't use any of the poorly designed critters, at least not at the wrong time. I was always loathe to put in 'random outsider #3' just to fill a CR slot (because the core monster manual doesn't have many high-CR foes who aren't outsiders). Thankfully, since we didn't have a page count to worry about, we could create original NPCs or monsters that did what we wanted, rather than having dozens of abilities that weren't key to the adventure.

Though I did have fun with bone devils in one adventure I wrote. Those things can fly, be invisible, and cast wall of ice at will, so I have a trio just flying around at one point, laying wall after wall after wall while the PCs have to deal with other foes.

 

[MerricB]

I'm beginning to think that Paizo's design philosophy of "make the encounters as hard as possible" is not for that group. We've decided to end the campaign after the next session (final part of City of Broken Idols). The optimising required to take on the encounters in these APs is ridiculous. It demonstrates all the bad bits of 3e.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Sorry to hear about that.

The only PC death I've suffered thus far came at the hands of another player who used a delayed blast fireball and I ahppened to be in the sequence.

I have been impressed that it's not all hack and slash and that there are still numerous areas where diplomacy is needed.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

Stap

I am running the STAP for some Argentinian D&D players in Buenos Aires.

I have had a crazy amount of PC deaths. A lot of it is their own fault -- no one wants to play a cleric, no one wants to be a fighter. A Beguiler, Warlock, Dread Necromancer and Wizard have a rough time staying alive.

Yet, some encounters just seem unfair. My most recent PC death was the beguiler, who was eaten by a T-Rex on a beach, which beat him on initiative, charged and bit him, then made it's will save versus the beguiler's only spell cast prior to being consumed. I'm really not sure what the player in question could have done to avoid this. The rest of the party either scattered or died, and the T-Rex ran off (it was only going to kill more PCs), so the PC is basically unrecoverable (not that they have access to any ressurection magic anyway where they are).

On the whole, I would say that the STAP is designed to be challenging but very fun for a bunch of math-inclined serious minmaxers. My old San Francisco group (a physicist, a lawyer, and several engineers) would totally love it, and probably do quite well.

But when you throw less cooperative, less metagamy less math-inclined players into its maw, it eats them.

Ken

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

more on the STAP

It has some really great set-piece scenes, especially in the Sea Wyvern's wake. Stuff like the sargasso , with zillions of sargasso creatures slowly lurching toward the PCs as they fight the Mother is really evocative. I also really liked the story of Father Feres. No one in my group took the Heal skill, LOL.

But, I am finding that the price for this in terms of the railroading involved makes me slightly unconfortable, especially given how deadly the AP is . I am used to running site-based adventures, where the PCs by and large choose the risk they wish to accept by choosing where and when to adventure. But the AP, by its nature, doesn't allow this.

I don't know why, but the Age of Worms AP (I ran it through Spire of Long Shadows) felt much less railroady to me, and my Players experienced way fewer deaths. Probably because it had more site based, rather than event based, encounters.

Ken

 

[Wycen]

It would be a shame to miss out on the Isle of Dread itself. Dump the Savage Tide Merric, but find a way to explore the iconic isle some other way. Maybe use the Razor Coast stuff coming out from www.sinisteradventures.com ?

 

[MerricB]

It would be a shame to miss out on the Isle of Dread itself. Dump the Savage Tide Merric, but find a way to explore the iconic isle some other way. Maybe use the Razor Coast stuff coming out from www.sinisteradventures.com ?

Oh, I haven't missed out on the Isle of Dread. I've run all the Savage Tide adventures that actually deal with the isle, and in my previous Great Kingdom campaign there were no less than three expeditions to the Isle - the first two based on the original adventure, the third Greg Vaughn's "Torrents of Dread".

####

My AP players enjoyed Age of Worms much more than Savage Tide. They could really feel ths story and the ominous nature of it. Savage Tide relies on them worrying about the "shadow pearls", and they just haven't been anywhere near interesting enough. Nor are the opponents readily identifiable. Who are they fighting again?

Cheers!

 

[Monkey Boy]

I'm beginning to think that Paizo's design philosophy of "make the encounters as hard as possible" is not for that group. We've decided to end the campaign after the next session (final part of City of Broken Idols). The optimising required to take on the encounters in these APs is ridiculous. It demonstrates all the bad bits of 3e.

I take it boardgames are back on the agenda and then 4e?

When you say 'these AP's require ridiculous optimization' do you include Age of Worms and Shackled city? If so why did you run them?

I also ran Savage tide up to the siege of farshore. I really enjoyed it but was feeling burnt out so figured saving Farshore was a good point to leave things. Seems I avoided the blasphemy at will monstrosities.