Slightly over halfway through Savage Tide (some spoilers)

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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".

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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!

You know, this sounds really like a shame for our group. So far, Savage Tide was pretty good, while Age of Worms ended in a disaster. The difference: Savage Tides has a good DM, Age of Worms... does not.

I never had the feel I understood who where the major players in AoW, but I definitely knew what we're up against. Savage Tidies is different - I know my short-term goals (save Farshore it was until the last session), but I didn't really get the underlying plot so far. But actually playing the game, I felt ST simply more enjoyable then AoW. I guess if the DMs were distributed the other way around, it would have been better... :/

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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 can't speak for Merric, but here is my view:

I think it was true for all 3 adventure paths, though so far Savage Tides actually worked best.
But we just rescued Farshore, we haven't gone any further.

The pathes get played in our group simply because they provide a level 1 to level 20 play experience, and offer interesting storylines to motivate the PC actions. Most of the members in my gaming group don't have the time or inclination (and some also ability , but I'll try anyway ) to create their own adventures and campaigns, and the adventure path are the perfect fix for us. I think the group also traditionally played a lot of published modules and adventures, even for other games.

 

[MerricB]

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.

I haven't run much of Shackled City - the group broke up before I could run much more than the 2nd adventure.

I ran AoW in its entirity, and it was inconsistent in difficulty. Really inconsistent. Encounter at Blackwall Keep had a lot of encounters so easy they were boring, and then the Spire of Long Shadows was stupid-crazy hard. It was overpowered encounter, rest, repeat. 5 minute day never, ever was so bad as that adventure. Oh, and if you didn't have death ward and mass resist energy, you were probably in a lot of trouble.

However, AoW had some really nice adventures as well - The Prince of Redhand may well be the best adventure Paizo ever released.

The less said about what rogue can do in Dawn of a New Age the better. Pretty much every creature was either (a) undead, (b) had concealment, or (c) was just straight-out immune to sneak attack.

We generally had fun with AoW, however, and I believe that Paizo are able to learn from their mistakes, so on to Savage Tide.

The first two or three adventures were fine. However, then we started hitting more and more difficult encounters. The actual structure of getting information to the players about what was going on also was quite poor. There's a prisoner in one of the adventures that must be rescued if the PCs are to continue to the next adventure. I missed his importance when I was running the adventure and because the encounter makes him somewhat hard to find, the PCs walked right on by. Oops. Kludge, kludge to get onto the next adventure!

With City of Broken Idols we really started hitting demons, and it's at this point that 3e takes leave of its senses. Blasphemy is one of the stupidest spells ever designed, completely broken at any level. Demons with multiple uses of Blasphemy? Oh, gods...

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

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

Heh. Actually, there should be a smooth transition. We play ST every 2 weeks, so the next session (this friday) will be the last of CoBI. Then 2 weeks later, hey - 4e will be out! (I hope!)

Cheers!

 

[stonegod]

I running (and soon to end AoW) and playing in ST. I love both, but I agree at high levels there are issues. I see this as more of a Paizo/3.x thing than anything else. Paizo loves complicated encounters, 3.x makes them *interesting*. Paizo likes a bit of optimization and cooperation; no way to survive otherwise.

 

[Wycen]

Memorial weekend we finished the shrine of the bat god. Our first "instant" character death also happened. Mr. Bat God exhaled a cone of hellish fire and our psion melted under it. He had grabbed my character and dimension doored to the other side of the chamber, so I could put the idol where it belonged. But it was 1 round too late and Mr. Bat God had already appeared.

We also learned we probably aren't going to finish the entire adventure path. Our hosts are moving, or planning to, but more importantly one fo them is expecting their 2nd child in January. So I don't think we'll make it to the end. At least not with this group.

Interestingly, we tried to avoid any encounter leading up to the volcanoes. Whether they were random or not, we all decided getting eaten by a pack of dinosaurs wouldn't be condusive to completing our tasks.

 

[Vael]

I haven't played Savage Tide, but I really enjoyed reading the adventure, up to the battle for Farshore, didn't really dig the later stuff.

Actually, I'm currently debating whether I want to try and upgrade AoW or ST to 4e.

 

[jodyjohnson]

We're doing the final battle Wednesday, June 4 as our 3.x finale.

I'd like to do SCAP and AoW converted to 4e in the coming years.

We skipped some early sections of STAP but have run most of it as-is (plot-wise, most encounters were heavily beefed up to account for Warblades, a Factotum, and a Master Specialist Wizard - and no PC Cleric 8) )