Advice on running Age of Worms?

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 8:17 pm

The stars have aligned such that a meatspace game within two days is a likely possibility. First time I'm trying a published adventure. I doubt I can make enough time to read all the dungeon issues that cover it before game time though.

I've got three guaranteed players who are all new to the game and possibly one more. I don't know what they'll be playing yet. I'll probably build their characters for them using Tome and whatever d20 stuff I think might be helpful once they give me their concepts.

Is there anything I'm likely to miss if I don't read all of it before game time?

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that Age of Worms is kinda hard. Should I start at level 2 or something?

Anything you'd change about it if you were planning on running it yourself, or wish was different when you were playing it?

Any other material you'd suggest working into it, e.g. some dragon article, some internet mod, some thread you guys made about this thing earlier, etc.?

Any other suggestions and advice?

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 12:49 am

I would think Tome is powerful enough that you can start at level 1, but I might give a generous point buy if you only have 3 players.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 1:11 am

I think it's a great adventure path; I've been playing in an Age of Worms play-by-post game for 4.5 years so far using Pathfinder (we're up to Kings of the Rift -- level 17).

My thoughts so far:
The Whispering Cairn (1st – 3rd)
-This was kind of a fun adventure with a typical dungeon crawl and a creepy necromancer to fight.
-The dungeon has acid beetle swarms that can be incredibly deadly to level 1 parties (seriously, fuck swarms that are immune to weapon damage). It wasn't a problem for us because my alchemist blew them up good.

The Three Faces of Evil (3rd – 5th)
-Some people like this adventure (three connected minidungeons themed around Vecna, Erythnul and Hextor), but as a player I thought the plot didn't make much sense. Some evil gangster told us to go into a mine and kill a bunch of cultists for no pay. Say what? And there are way too many enemies to kill them all in one day, so you have to go away and rest while the remaining cultists sit around and wait for you to come back, I guess.
-The temple to Hextor can be pretty deadly (we had a near-TPK); it's easy to activate multiple encounters' worth of enemies into one high CR encounter. Some parties also have trouble with the temple to Vecna, which has a spellcaster throwing around 7d6 lightning bolts.

Encounter at Blackwall Keep (5th – 6th)
-This adventure (by Sean K Reynolds) is kind of silly, since your level 5/6 party is facing a bunch of 2 HD lizard men for a good portion of the module. On the bright side, it made us feel like bad-asses mowing them down. On the down side, your higher level mentor drops you off and then refuses to assist you because Fuck You. Gee thanks.

The Hall of Harsh Reflections (7th – 8th)
-Adventures with doppelgangers sound cool, but I usually find they fall kind of flat in practice. Also, there's some invisible stalkers that were annoying. But the main complaint most people have is with the mind flayer sorcerer boss. His mind blast DC is insanely high (I think it might have been miscalculated, so you should double-check), he has an SR that's difficult to overcome, and he has a bunch of minions that have a gaze attack that causes Slow. This was another very, very near-TPK, even with our GM having a bit of pity on us.

The Champion’s Belt (9th – 10th)
-I thought this might be kind of dull (most of the adventure is taken up by a bunch of arena fights), but we had a lot of fun buffing ourselves to the gills and then laying a smackdown on the other teams. Definitely one of the more memorable adventures.

Gathering of Winds (11th – 12th)
-On the other hand, this adventure was pretty limp. You return the same dungeon from the first adventure and poke around some more looking for a Macguffin. The only parts I remember were fighting a dragon and talking to some kind of super-ghoul.

The Spire of Long Shadows (13th – 14th)
-This adventure has a reputation of being deadly, but it probably depends on how good you are at fighting undead. For instance, they introduce a super-annoying type of undead that unleashes 14d6 bursts of negative energy, hurting the party and healing themselves. If you have Death Ward up, they're boring and if you don't have Death Ward up, they're ridiculous.

The Prince of Redhand (15th)
-This adventure revolves around meeting people at a creepy party and trying to find some information. It was kind of fun with a mix of different party games and skill checks. Some people really get into the role-playing aspect, I imagine.

The Library of Last Resort (16th – 17th)
-You go to an island and fight some high CR creatures to impress a bunch of druids. There's also an enemy party trying to do the same thing. We switched GMs at this point and the new GM had them buff up and attack us in our sleep, which I also think is a lame thing to do (but YMMV). There was a big fight scene at the end with 20 (!) of the 14d6 blasting guys along with a bunch of other enemies; it could have turned into a TPK without some GM sympathy, I suspect.

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 1:36 am

Can we get a link to that? I bet I'm not the onlyear one out here who would like to see a party grow from level 1 to 17.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 3:21 am

seconded.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 3:38 am

http://paizo.com/campaigns/TheWhisperingCairn/gameplay

Wulfbanes · Post by **Wulfbanes** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 8:03 am

I played in a Age of Worms up until about The Spire of Long Shadows Hogarth describes.

1. You absolutely need to be able to deal with swarms, during the whole of the campaign. There's in fact so many random swarms thrown in that can destroy a conventional party, it made me sad.
2. Having anyone be incorporeal or have a burrow speed will destroy the campaign to no semblance. Don't have it at any point. The dungeons aren't made for it.
3. The encounters vary from easy to totally doable (hordes of kobolds), to getting stomped (aforementioned mind flayer, or two clicking beetles with a 100 feet aura forcing two save or skip your turns every turn). There's very little balance in them, and you're probably best of to read and check anything you'd find and probably redo most of what your players will face (For example, a wizard with colour spray, lighting bolt, fireball, burning orb and web while you're in a 5ft wide hallway, absolutely creamed us). My party kept going through stretches of rolling over the enemy to getting TPK'd and basically rebuilding for that battle and seeing how far we'd get.
4. If your players die, and we wiped quite a few times, with maybe 1-2 survivors, the campaign starts making very, very little sense. No collective memory, no real incentive, etc.
5. As Hogarth said, it's really hard to accept that the super-knowledgeable wizard needs some noob adventurers to do anything at all.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Dec 05, 2014 3:14 am

I also hate having a revolving door party. It helped in our game that we were using Pathfinder PCs (with the extra HPs and feats that brings) and we were also using a hero point system. Even so, there were quite a few close calls.

The Faceless One didn't hurt us too badly (we nauseated him with a stink bomb and our party cleric used a scroll of Dispel Magic on the web) and the beetles didn't bother us too much either (our melee monster made his save vs. nausea). Likewise, the worm swarms weren't much of an issue once we got high enough to cast Repel Vermin

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Fri Dec 05, 2014 9:55 pm

Thanks for the suggestions.

Since no one sent me their character concepts today's session was mostly just chargen (none of them know the rules yet) and they didn't even enter the Cairn yet.

Three players were able to make it. Not sure if I'll get a fourth or not later. I gave them 40 point buy, 4 bonus skill points per level and a +2 to any ability score like Pathfinder humans get. I'm also allowing them to invoke Schroedinger's inventory, i.e. they can spend an amount of GP to retroactively buy items, so long as they don't exceed the amount of money they had when they were last in town. So they can have alchemist's fire for the swarms (I'll suggest it if they don't think of that, as they're new to the game). In case a TPK still happens, I suppose I'll just allow quick loading.

Party is composed of a Kantian Paladin, a Tome Rogue (but with d8 hit die) and a Warper.

The Paladin wanted to do Sword and Board and he said he wanted to stun people by shield bashing them. I gave him a long sword and a heavy spiked shield. For feats, I gave him TWF and made up a Shield Feat that lets him keep shield AC even when bashing and can daze for one round if it hits (DC = 10 + 1/2 lvl + STR, Fort Negates). I suppose I could allow him to damage swarms by trying to squash them with a shield. Using Pathfinder's unlimited cantrips gives him at will CLW.

The Tome Rogue wanted to focus on Archery and Stealth. I gave him Point Blank Shot and Sniper. He managed to swipe some potions off of the rival adventurers through some lucky rolling.

The Warper class looks like it could be problematic, but at level 1, it can't do much though so I'll worry about that later.

The Warper's player said he wanted to do both melee and ranged. He was in a bit of a hurry and everyone was eager to start. I just gave him Combat Looting so he could switch equipment as a free action. Also gave him Danger Sense as always considered to be actively spotting, listening and searching combined with a high wisdom works pretty well together. The +3 to initiative doesn't hurt. Still, now I've got a week to choose different feats for him and I'm welcome to suggestions.

The warper left early so I threw in a random encounter with three bandits. The rogue got hit once for 7 damage, but was cured by the paladin for 8 and after that the duo handled them without a scratch. I got the impression that they had fun and that they're looking forward to continuing. I was a bit unprepared as I was busy with some school stuff previously. Looking forward to next week, or whenever the next session happens.

Will the party be okay without a Wizard or Cleric?

Wulfbanes · Post by **Wulfbanes** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 5:13 pm

Only if they can deal with swarms as not wizards.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 8:02 pm

I've run The Whispering Cairn several times now, Three Faces of Evil three times, and Encounter at Blackwall Keep twice. That's as far as I've gotten, myself, but here's what I can say.

Whispering Cairn: The swarms will kill most parties dead. No one with any sort of experience preps burning hands, so most parties I've seen end up trying to lead the swarms outside in hopes they'll disperse. The dungeon is also unnecessarily long (as most module dungeons are). You can cut a good quarter-to-third and still have a satisfying explore.

Make sure you describe the main room with the sarcophagus and lanterns such that the party is clued in on the whole "turn the sarcophagus like a pointer" thing.

The ghost boy could probably tear a first level party apart, and the module suggests starting off with him using his horrific visage attack. This is dumb and tells the party that this is not a talky encounter. Seriously, it's like a dragon comes in and breathes fire on you, then immediately says, "Oh, hai, I'z just playin' around. Y'all my besties, right?"

The zombie dinner party has worked for me only once. Three straight parties charged the table immediately upon entering the room.

Three Faces of Evil: The Hextor temple is very easy to aggro into being an unwinnable fight for most parties. The Erythnul temple is a boring cave. The Vecna temple is a literal maze -- and it's huge.

I would like to call out the fact that mazes are fine in CRPGs, but they are absolutely terrible in tabletop. No one wants to sit there and map out foot-by-foot a sixty turn maze. Fuck that noise.

The fight with the big monster at the end can go poorly, because that monster is a beast. A bit of BC ruins it, but easily claw someone's face off.

Resolving the adventure's a bit odd, because I'm pretty sure some of the later modules assume the continued prominence of certain NPCs, while my parties have always been of the vengeful-murderer variety.

Encounter at Blackwall Keep: I've seen two approaches to breaking the siege. The first party used major image and other trickery to fool the lizardfolk into retreating. The second party just murderized the whole group. CR 1 creatures with a +2 to hit have a hard time threatening a party where no one's AC is below 22.

Random encounters in the Mistmarsh can be deadly. One party lost three PCs to poison and stuff, IIRC. The Tome barbarian was the only survivor in that one. That campaign ended there, so I've never had a chance to run the lizardfolk lair.

I've currently got the second party right on the edge of the swamp, ready to enter, so we'll see how that goes with a larger, more numerically optimized group.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:40 pm

NineInchNall wrote: Whispering Cairn: The swarms will kill most parties dead. No one with any sort of experience preps burning hands, so most parties I've seen end up trying to lead the swarms outside in hopes they'll disperse.

Furthermore, a single 1d4 damage casting of Burning Hands has zero chance to kill a spider swarm. Considering that swarms have pretty good Reflex saves in general, you'd end up doing 2 or 3 points of damage per casting against a monster with 9 hp.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 10:27 pm

Yeah, swarms are just all bad.

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Sun Dec 07, 2014 7:29 pm

Thanks NineInchNail.

Reading slowly through it from time to time, though I'll binge through once school lightens up a bit. I kinda liked the backstory of the Earth Elemental in the workshop, but my players don't have any reason to know Terran so it would just be a random monster to them. Wonder if I should leave a wand of Share Language lying around somewhere.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sun Dec 07, 2014 10:42 pm

What are some good anti-swarm tactics other than mtp or running away?

Alchemist fire etc. seems pretty worthless (since swarms are immune to the direct hit damage and thus only take 1 point of splash damage)

In 3.5 a torch or energy weapon at least does something, not so in pathfinder.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Dec 07, 2014 10:58 pm

What level are we talking about, ishy? If you're level 2 and don't have a wizard or a cleric with the Imagination subdomain, I'd stock up on tanglefoot bags and have the party be ready to launch them in a volley. But only if the party was sure that swarms were going to be a regular thing, because that shit is expensive. If you're level 3+, a couple of web spells plus a cantrip like Spark might do the trick. In both and especially the latter case you definitely want to try death by a thousand cuts as a tactic. If you have a skeleton or three -- a distinct possibility with the necromancer wizard specialization and clerics having lesser animate dead -- tell your undead buddies to go swarm squishing and find somewhere to hole up. However, the best trick to dealing with swarms is, by far, judicious use of illusion magic. If you don't love silent image by now then you'd better learn to.

That said, I've always felt like swarms should've had a rule where if most-to-all constituent members had to pass through an unavoidable environmental hazard like a firewall or a pool of acid they all suffered damage. So a swarm of normal-ass spiders trying to get through a flaming square would be insta-gibbed while something hardier like swarm of rats would lose a % of health proportional to average damage suffered.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sun Dec 07, 2014 11:06 pm

Level 1-2 mostly. Guess burning some oil works.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Dec 07, 2014 11:10 pm

I wouldn't use burning oil unless you had a total tactical advantage. Too unwieldy, doesn't take out or immobilize swarms quickly enough. It's only two average damage per round for two rounds.

At your level, there's really no way around it; get the wizard to start using silent image. If the wizard is unwilling or unable to do this, then you need to roll up a spellcaster with the appropriate spell.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun Dec 07, 2014 11:19 pm

ishy wrote:What are some good anti-swarm tactics other than mtp or running away?

Alchemist fire etc. seems pretty worthless (since swarms are immune to the direct hit damage and thus only take 1 point of splash damage)

In my experience, most GMs allow splash weapons to do 1.5x full direct hit damage on a direct hit to a swarm. But that still is far from a great solution; a spider swarm has a pretty good touch AC (compared to the average level 1-2 PC's attack bonus, anyways).

Lago PARANOIA wrote: I'd stock up on tanglefoot bags and have the party be ready to launch them in a volley.

Again, you face the question of whether a tanglefoot bag is an "effect that targets a specific number of creatures" since you throw a tanglefoot bag at "a creature", according to the rules.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Dec 07, 2014 11:30 pm

Suggestion rescinded. Holy shit, not only was I wrong about that shit targeting squares instead of critters it's also a lot more expensive than I remembered. You'd just be better off chucking alchemist flasks.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Mon Dec 08, 2014 6:33 am

radthemad4 wrote:Thanks NineInchNail.

Reading slowly through it from time to time, though I'll binge through once school lightens up a bit. I kinda liked the backstory of the Earth Elemental in the workshop, but my players don't have any reason to know Terran so it would just be a random monster to them. Wonder if I should leave a wand of Share Language lying around somewhere.

I find that's typical of modules in general. An NPC or critter may have a cool backstory, but since the players have no incentive to stop and talk first in any given dungeon encounter, there's no way any of that backstory is going to come up in actual play.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 10:59 pm

I have actually run a good chunk of Age of Worms but I ran it in a non-standard way (for a single PC who started out WAY overleveled for reasons of balancing out being a single PC, i.e. a single Level 7 Druid instead of a balanced level 1 party at the start of The Whispering Cairn) so I'm not sure how useful any advice I might have about it would be in a general case. I also wound up running "Gathering of Winds" before "The Champion's Belt", and that's the furthest that we've gotten so far.

I agree strongly with Hogarth's opinion that it's an awesome adventure path. We had a lot of fun with it and I really like the dungeon design in particular, at least in the parts that I have run.

I will throw this one thing out, though: unless your table is made up of dedicated power gamers that are really fucking good at it, and have pretty good dice luck too, the bullshit "bespoke" demon at the end of "Gathering of Winds" is seriously going to rape your party to death. It is so much more powerful than any other "real" demons or devils anywhere in the approximate locus of its CR that I was left literally bewildered.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sat Dec 13, 2014 6:03 am

Looking back, our GM swapped out the oculus demon (which was the source of many complaints on the Paizo boards) with an astradaemon. It was tough enough; a summoned derghodaemon temporarily feebleminded my alchemist and then she failed a save vs. Finger of Death (but she got to reroll thanks to the party bard casting Saving Finale).

EDIT: You might find this thread interesting -- Deadliest Age of Worms Encounters

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Sat Dec 13, 2014 9:14 pm

Thanks

Not much happened this week. More time was gone as two of my players lost their sheets and I had to make new ones (Also started making one for one player's younger brother, who wandered off halfway into the process), this time on mythweavers instead of on paper. My players decided to actually put in their skill ranks and spent some time selling the loot they got off of the bandits (just a random encounter I threw at them for kicks) last week. That is to say, they spent a lot of time thinking about what to sell, what to keep, etc. which left me twiddling my thumbs, but they seemed to enjoy it. They entered the cairn and fought off the wolves without any problems. They went down one of the elevators and were about to face a Bombadier Beetle and an Acid Beetle Swarm, but the session had to end there as it was getting late. They did decide to retroactively buy torches and oil on the spot though before we realized how late it was and decided to end the session there. I'll tell them about Alchemist's fire and probably allow 1.5x full direct damage on a direct hit as hogarth suggested.

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 5:58 pm

An old friend who moved abroad a few years ago came back to visit. We spent a lot of time catching up but still squeezed in a ridiculously short session. He decided to join the game for as long as he was here and made a Pokemaster with a Charmander. The Charmander one shotted an acid beetle swarm and the Bombadier Beetle didn't give them any trouble afterwards. That's pretty much all that happened during the session.

Don't know how far we'll get while he's here, but I'm wondering if he'll want to keep the baby owlbear. He could capture the adult owlbear too, but he won't be able to control it till level 5. One of the other players wants to keep the new character around even after his player leaves. I suppose I'll just let any of them decide his actions.