The Age of Worms is over! (Spoilers)

[RichGreen]

I'd say "Savage Tide", but you may find the theme a little too close to Freeport (not that I know much about Freeport).

Cheers!

Yeah, although that might be a good thing. Bastion of Broken Souls also has a Demogorgon connection. I'm certainly enjoying reading it and there seems to be a great deal of variety in the adventures.

Cheers


Richard

 

[Agamon]

Don't judge the book by the last page. AoW is a great AP, I'm sure Merric wouldn't disagree. The final encounter can be fiddled with by the DM to suit taste and power of the party.

AoW is looking to be a better AP than Savage Tide, IMO. STAP feel a lot less epic, less all-encomapassing, with little foreboding of doom, in comparison. You get a sense of all three of those right off the bat in AoW.

 

[Nightfall]

I agree with Ag on this. While STAP is interesting, it's more high seas adventure with some exploration involvement. It certainly doesn't develop the sense of "foreboding" that AoW has. That doesn't mean ST isn't good, merely different.

 

[MerricB]

Don't judge the book by the last page. AoW is a great AP, I'm sure Merric wouldn't disagree.

I don't. I really liked AoW, although there are some bad design decisions here and there.

AoW is looking to be a better AP than Savage Tide, IMO. STAP feel a lot less epic, less all-encomapassing, with little foreboding of doom, in comparison. You get a sense of all three of those right off the bat in AoW.

Savage Tide has one advantage: the first set of adventures are well-linked, and offer good opportunity for role-playing.

The first four or five AoW adventures don't really link well; there's a few too many red herrings, and I feel the PCs are kept a bit too much in the dark as to what's going on.

Part 1 says, "This is an adventure about the Wind Lords and their fight against Chaos"
Part 2 says, "This is an adventure about the Ebon Triad and stopping them raising an abomination"
Part 3 says, "This is a fight against those who encroach upon Diamond Lake"

At this point, Allustan seizes upon the green worms and says, "You must investigate!" The PCs are left wondering a little what's going on.

Part 4 says, "Don't meddle in the affairs of evil cults, because they will try to assassinate you!"
Part 5 says, "Finding out who wants to assassinate you is a good idea!"

Now, the PCs find that it's the cult of Kyuss!

I'm not entirely happy with the progression. The idea that "green worms=bad" isn't played on enough. Remember the saying, "Show, don't tell?" This isn't followed. There's only one Spawn of Kyuss in parts 1-4, IIRC, and the SoK in part 5 are well hidden away.

At least in Savage Tide the threat is made real from the very beginning, although not who is behind it and its full implications.

Cheers!

 

[Agamon]

The first four or five AoW adventures don't really link well; there's a few too many red herrings, and I feel the PCs are kept a bit too much in the dark as to what's going on.

Part 1 says, "This is an adventure about the Wind Lords and their fight against Chaos"
Part 2 says, "This is an adventure about the Ebon Triad and stopping them raising an abomination"
Part 3 says, "This is a fight against those who encroach upon Diamond Lake"

At this point, Allustan seizes upon the green worms and says, "You must investigate!" The PCs are left wondering a little what's going on.

Part 4 says, "Don't meddle in the affairs of evil cults, because they will try to assassinate you!"
Part 5 says, "Finding out who wants to assassinate you is a good idea!"

Now, the PCs find that it's the cult of Kyuss!

I'm not entirely happy with the progression. The idea that "green worms=bad" isn't played on enough. Remember the saying, "Show, don't tell?" This isn't followed. There's only one Spawn of Kyuss in parts 1-4, IIRC, and the SoK in part 5 are well hidden away.

I guess you and I had different approaches to the AP. To make sure my players didn't feel railroaded, my NPCs were fountains of knowledge (Allustan and Eligos, in particular), so when decisions had to be made, they didn't wonder why they needed to do what they do, they already knew.

My players found about Kyuss and the Age of Worms and how the Ebon Triad was involved in helping bring it about before the 2nd adventure began. The 3rd adventure seemed unconnected until they figured out that Ilthane was also a worshipper of Kyuss. Plus, our Paladin died from worm-infection fighting those SoK, so it was impressed upon my party of the problem that was coming. The 4th adventure made sense, because if they're trying to stop the Ebon Triad and cult of Kyuss, why wouldn't the cults try to stop them first? And while some may see the 5th adventure as "trying to get to the guy that tried to assassinate us", it's more important to stop him when they find out he's got the Apostilic Scrolls and is planning on turning the Free City into the Undead City.

And we've had plenty of opportunity for RP. The Diamond Lake backdrop was awesome in that regard. There were a few sessions that we didn't see much combat for all the roleplaying in DL.

At least in Savage Tide the threat is made real from the very beginning, although not who is behind it and its full implications.

I'm playing and not DMing this. It kinda cheeses me that I know a little more about who's behind what than I should (I'm doing my best to keep away from spoilers...damn Dragon mag!). I like my Favored Soul, but if he happens to die, I'm going to try and talk my DM into letting me be a succubus.

 

[Razz]

I've just arrived home after the last session of our Age of Worms campaign.

For those wondering how many would fall in the last session, I can give the answer: One. In the fight with Maralee, the cleric was attacked for 250 damage in one round and died. (In the next round, the paladin used a ring of wishes to revivify the cleric).

Kyuss himself never got an attack. The two rounds of him coming out of the monolith was all the group needed to slay him.

Looking at my notes, it went something like this:

Round 1:
(Init 26) Tom the Rogue: Flies out of stairwell, shoots once at Kyuss (5 damage inflicted)
(Init 24) Martin the Fighter: Flies out of stairwell into melee, uses Slashing Flurry (PH2) to attack twice for some damage (35 points)
(Init 23) Craig the Druid: Flies out of stairwell, casts Deadfall (SC) on Kyuss for some damage (63 points). Kyuss is not knocked prone.
(Init 19) Peggy the Wizard: Flies out of stairwell, casts Meteor Swarm on Kyuss for some damage (20+8+11+19=58 damage)
(Init 15) Bradford the Paladin: Flies out of stairwell, moves into position for charge next turn; casts Find the Gap (SC)
(Init 4) Rob the Cleric: Flies out of stairwell, casts Firestorm on Kyuss, but fails to penetrate SR.

Round 2:
Tom the Rogue: Puts bow away, draws sword.
Martin the Fighter: Goes into haste, slashing flurry and attacks with Weapon Supremacy [PH2] and Power Attack - Kyuss takes 25+27+37+41 Damage.
Craig the Druid: Casts final Deadfall for 68 Damage.
Peggy the Wizard: Casts fireball (or similar) for 26 damage.
Bradford the Paladin: Swift casts Rhino's Rush (SC), charges, power attacks for 20, and Smite Evil... final damage: 168 points!
Rob the Cleric: Moves in and hits Kyuss for 18 damage.

Round 3: (Kyuss will act after Peggy in initiative order, having rolled an 18)
Tom the Rogue: Uses magic sword to hit Kyuss with sonic damage (16 damage)
Martin the Fighter: Goes into haste, slashing flurry and attacks with Weapon Supremacy [PH2] and Power Attack - Kyuss takes more damage than he has HP remaining and dies.

So, there ended the campaign. Bradford fought Prince Zeech (who had killed his PC's father, back in the day when they were both paladins) and all ended happily.

We then created characters for the Savage Tide adventure path...

Cheers!

That would've been very anti-climactic to my players...and to myself.

With a group like that, you should've just had them fight Kyuss in his prime (I glimpsed over his stats in Dungeon and figured there was something in the quest for the PCs to weaken him, I assume, and deal with him easily). With players like mine, I'd send Kyuss's full demigod form after them.

 

[Joshua Randall]

The first four or five AoW adventures don't really link well; there's a few too many red herrings, and I feel the PCs are kept a bit too much in the dark as to what's going on.

One of the big things that Robin Laws emphasizes in his book on Good Gamemastering is that you've got to tell the players what they should be doing. Don't be subtle. Don't be mysterious. Just tell them.

Most of the time, the players are working in a cloud of ignorance, paranoia, and confusion. If they can't figure out what they're supposed to do, they'll either get bored, frustrated, or will just leave the game.

AoW doesn't do a very good job, as written, of telling the players what they should be doing. I think that is a fair criticism of the adventure path.

 

[DarkSoldier]

I ran AoW for my group (human sorcerer/master transmogrifist, human rogue/sorcerer, half-celestial fighter, half-elf cleric/divine oracle, human cleric/church inquisitor), and the climax could have been a lot more anticlimactic had I not thrown some rules out the window.

Since the cleric's player is a min/maxer of the highest order, the sorcerer's player had to start an arms race with him just to keep up. Having that in mind, I decided that hit point damage would not kill Kyuss, and even doing the tasks to slow him down wouldn't help.

In the end, the cleric repeat gated two great radiant wyrms to grab and pin Kyuss (+78 grapple, size Colossal), and they pummelled him with bolts of glory and admixed breath weapons from the transmog's 12-headed pyrohydra polymorph. Kyuss did not get to do a whole lot while two gigantic lizards were sitting on him.

After dealing nearly 1,500 damage to Kyuss, the cleric charged and stabbed the shard of the Rod of Seven Parts into his face.

Kaboom.

 

[Morrow]

When my Freeport campaign finishes up with Bastion of Broken Souls, I was going to run Age of Worms but I'm not so sure now. It's obviously a big time investment. What do you think? Should I go for Shackled City or Savage Tide instead?


Richard

I don't want to hijack this thread, but I'd love to hear what you did with your Freeport campaign at the higher levels. Mine will probably hit 12th level this weekend and I'm always looking for new ideas to steal.

Morrow

 

[RichGreen]

I don't want to hijack this thread, but I'd love to hear what you did with your Freeport campaign at the higher levels. Mine will probably hit 12th level this weekend and I'm always looking for new ideas to steal.

Morrow

I don't want to disappoint you, but I call it my Freeport campaign because that's where the campaign started. We played through the original Freeport Trilogy, as well as Hell in Freeport and The Last Resort (from Tales of Freeport) but much of the action has been on the mainland (Oerth's Principality of Ulek) and the campaign has also visited the jungles of Hepmonaland (with heavy use of Atlas Games' Nyambe) and Rokugan and its Spirit Realms. Other published adventures have included The Sunless Citadel, Wizard's Amulet/Crucible of Freya (Necromancer), Three Days to Kill, Maiden Voyage (Atlas), The Standing Stone and The Winding Way (Dungeon). We're currently playing Bright Mountain King from Dungeon #142. We started playing every 4-6 weeks when 3e first came out and the players will hit level 20 this year, hence me trying to figure out which Adventure Path is the best!

My worry about Shackled City is that there are too many long dungeons in it that might get tedioius. I think Age of Worms and Savage Tide both look more fun to play and GM.

Cheers


Richard