Review: War of the Burning Sky Adenture Path (3.5E)

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Review: War of the Burning Sky Adenture Path (3.5E)

Post by hogarth »

A few years ago, I bought the PDFs for the 3.5E War of the Burning Sky Adventure Path; there was a sale, and the price of $1-$2 per adventure was low enough to tempt me. I've read through it all a few times, so I've probably gotten my money's worth at this point. War of the Burning Sky (WOTBS) came out in 2007 and 2008, that weird time after the announcement of 4E when no one was quite sure what the future would look like for d20 products.

Inspired by RelentlessImp's review of Shackled City, I thought I'd try reviewing it here. However, I'm pretty sure I'll flake out before writing reviews of all 12 adventures (plus the Player's Guide and Campaign Guide), so I'll start by summarizing my opinions.

The plot in a nutshell is this: There's an evil empire that wants to expand south and the PCs are from a fortified city-state that is standing in its path. The goal of the adventure path is to gather allies and to find a super-weapon in order to (a) defend their home town, (b) defeat the evil empress who wants to take over the continent and (c) defeat the empress's allies who want to destroy the continent.

Things I liked about it:

* The players get a cool artifact and they actually get to use it for a good chunk of the game (in adventures 8-12); it's not just a macguffin.

* Players get to accumulate a bunch of NPC allies, and a number of antagonists can be converted to allies. It's way too common in D&D adventures to have NPC "allies" who just order the PCs around and do nothing themselves.

* Most of the adventures feel like you're progressing towards a definite goal, not just playing random adventures with only a token reference to the main plot.

* The quality of the art ranges from passable to very good. The only problem is that maybe 90% of the art is NPC portraits. That's nice to have, but some more variety would have been welcome.

Things I didn't like about it:

* One faction of bad guys (the trillith, a race of incorporeal dream monsters) have poorly-defined plot powers. Maybe it wouldn't bother me as a player, but I find it insulting as a GM when an adventure makes up random abilities that aren't in a creature's stat block.

* Important information is scattered among fourteen different (sometimes contradictory) documents. This applies to game stats (e.g. there are new feats introduced in practically every adventure, NPCs and magic items have different abilities depending on which adventure you're reading, etc.) and back story (there are a bunch of events that took place ~40-100 years before the campaign starts, but even if you go through the work of reading all of the adventures and putting everything on one timeline, some of it doesn't make sense). Again, this wouldn't bother me as a player, but it's annoying when I'm trying to read the adventure path as a work of fiction.

* New combat rules are introduced twice in later modules in an attempt to make high-level characters care about getting attack by low-level scrubs (and they both suck). So in adventure #4, 20 level 4 grunts are supposed to be a challenge to an 8th level party (fair enough) and then in adventure #9 they introduce archery volley rules so that 20 level 4 grunts can hurt 16th level PCs and in adventure #12 they introduce swarm-like rules so that 20 level 4 grunts can hurt 19th level PCs. Screw that.
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Post by amethal »

When I ran this campaign , the Trillith certainly did piss off at least one of my players. Turns out he's not a fan of unique creatures having DR 10/Bizarre since in practice it normally amounts to 10/-.

(From memory, all of the trillith have different ways of overcoming their damage reduction, so if you did somehow stumble across what would bypass it for one monster it was no help with the others.)

From my perspective, the host of new rules made it very hard for a lazy DM like me to run it. For example, I looked through the Commander class in the Players Guide, judged it uninspiring and never gave it another thought - until the PCs end up fighting NPCs with 10 levels in the damn thing and I literally have no idea what any of the listed class abilities actually do.
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Post by hogarth »

amethal, did you end up running it from beginning to end?
amethal wrote:When I ran this campaign , the Trillith certainly did piss off at least one of my players. Turns out he's not a fan of unique creatures having DR 10/Bizarre since in practice it normally amounts to 10/-.
Yes, weird DR is something only a GM could love. Clearly the writer is thinking that the PCs will use trial and error, but when combats only last 3 rounds there's no such thing as trial and error.
amethal wrote:From my perspective, the host of new rules made it very hard for a lazy DM like me to run it. For example, I looked through the Commander class in the Players Guide, judged it uninspiring and never gave it another thought - until the PCs end up fighting NPCs with 10 levels in the damn thing and I literally have no idea what any of the listed class abilities actually do.
Well, the commander class (a cheap knock-off of the Marshal class from the Miniatures Handbook) has such a tiny number of class abilities that it's relatively easy to list them all in the stat block. But I agree that there's a lot of reading that you need to do before you figure out what all of the leadership feats do (spoiler alert: not much).
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Post by amethal »

hogarth wrote:amethal, did you end up running it from beginning to end?
Yeah, I ran it all the way through. For the most part it was very enjoyable, and the sheer ambition of the thing was a delight - "right, so there's this stag, and it's on fire, and it's in a forest, and that's also on fire; and the fire has been burning for decades and nobody knows why".

Of course, there's plenty of stuff I'd have done differently, and bits I didn't like much.

I'd pretty much run out of energy by the last couple of adventures, so I don't think I did a very good job of running the climax.
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Post by hogarth »

Campaign Guide

* This explains the basic plot behind the campaign, although it's clear that the outline was written before the individual adventures because it's not a perfect match. One thing I liked is that they spend one page describing step by step what would happen in the PCs absence (the war has more casualties and then the trilliths destroy the continent).
* The campaign guide pays some lip service to the idea of adapting the campaign to your home campaign world, but the geopolitical set-up is so specific that you'd basically have to rewrite a large chunk of it. E.g., a city-state that is a chokepoint between two kingdoms that were allies but are now on the brink of war, a country that had a bloody civil war 20 years ago, a forest that has been on fire for 40 years, etc.
* One good thing about having the story tied to a brand new campaign world is that you don't have to worry about turning your existing campaign setting into shit if things go south.
* There's also some rules about the evil empire's "inquisitors" -- clerics that trade in channeling negative energy for dispelling magic. The campaign authors have a big boner for counterspelling, so a bunch of the bad guys are focused around that.
* One thing I don't like about the campaign setting is that there's basically no information about gods and religions, other than the very rare comment like "So-and-so worships a god of the sea". I understand that they might want to leave things open for the players to make up their own gods and so on, but it's not even clear who the evil inquisitors worship, and they make up a big chunk of the bad guys.

Player's Guide

* This basically introduces the various countries for the players, along with a bit of campaign history. As a player, I like a bit of background but not so much that it seems like studying, and this seemed to be a decent balance.
* There are also a variety of feats, alternate class features, and a new class.
* First of all, they introduce the idea of "leadership feats". They're based around the idea that a non-bard PC can light all of his/her feats on fire in order to have a slightly worse version of Inspire Courage, albeit the "leadership" version lets you give a pep talk in advance that triggers automatically during the next combat.
* Then there's the new class: the Commander. As I noted, it's a riff on the Marshal class from the Miniatures Handbook. But whereas the Marshal allows you to add your full Cha bonus to a bunch of rolls at level 1, the Commander stretches it out to +1/level, maxing out at your Cha bonus. So they took a class that was 1 level long and stretched it into a class that's ~7 levels long. Oh, and you get some of those shitty leadership feats as bonus feats. Whoopee. There's another few unrelated abilities starting at level 16 (!), but who cares.
* The other stuff is a mixed bag. For instance, there's a feat that allows spellcasters to use Bluff to get readied actions vs. spellcasting to trigger prematurely, and there's a wizard alternate class feature that allows them to swap Scribe Scroll and an extra prohibited school for the ability to cast in light armor. Spellcasters probably don't need more abilities that make big dumb fighters feel small in the pants....
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Post by Kaelik »

hogarth wrote:* One thing I don't like about the campaign setting is that there's basically no information about gods and religions, other than the very rare comment like "So-and-so worships a god of the sea". I understand that they might want to leave things open for the players to make up their own gods and so on, but it's not even clear who the evil inquisitors worship, and they make up a big chunk of the bad guys.
They probably worship Vecna, and are keeping it a secret, since Vecna knows all secrets, but if it stops being a secret, he stops knowing it. So they have to keep their worship a secret to get in good with their god.

What action is that bluff check by the way?
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Post by amethal »

hogarth wrote:* One thing I don't like about the campaign setting is that there's basically no information about gods and religions, other than the very rare comment like "So-and-so worships a god of the sea".
On a whim, I set the game in Eberron's distant past, and used the Eberron gods. Turns out the Eberron sea god is the Devourer, which was not a great fit ...
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Post by hogarth »

Kaelik wrote:What action is that bluff check by the way?
It's a part of spellcasting; it's not a separate action at all. So there's no reason not to try a fake-out every single time you cast a spell.
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You have studied the art of spell dueling, perhaps under the famed evoker Gabal in the small school he maintains in Gate Pass, or at the Lyceum academy in Seaquen.

Prerequisite: Ability to cast spells.

Benefit: You gain Bluff and Sense Motive as bonus class skills. In addition, you know how to convince an onlooker that you’re casting a spell when you actually are not. Whenever you cast a spell, you may make a Bluff check, and any opponent who would respond to you casting a spell — such as by attempting to counter it, taking an attack of opportunity, or performing a readied action — makes a Sense Motive check with a DC equal to your Bluff check. If you win the opposed check, you trick your opponent into acting before you actually begin casting. Counterspells are wasted, because they were completed before you began casting; attacks of opportunity that hit you do not force you to make a Concentration check, because the damage was dealt before you began casting; other readied actions are completed before you actually begin casting. If you fail the opposed check, your opponent’s action overlaps your spellcasting as normal.
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Post by hogarth »

War of the Burning Sky #1: The Scouring of Gate Pass (lvl 1-3)

* My suggested alternate musical title: New Year's Day
* The Ragesian army begins its siege of the city-state of Gate Pass while the PCs chase down a box full of stolen plans. Except it's not much of a chase because the elves who stole the plans just sit around and wait for the PCs show up.
* There's also a subplot where the PCs are followed by bounty hunters looking to capture spellcasters and sell them to the Ragesians.
* The adventure introduces a bunch of NPC allies: some (potentially) accompany the heroes immediately, and some show up in adventures #9 (the liberation of Gate Pass) and #12 (the big finale). I like it when NPCs show up later on.
* All in all, it's not a bad adventure, but I think low-level adventures are harder to screw up.
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Post by hogarth »

War of the Burning Sky #2: The Indomitable Fire Forest of Innenotdar (lvl 3-5)

[*] Suggested listening: Through The Fire And Flames

[*] First of all, I hate the name of this adventure. The words "indomitable" and "Innenotdar" seem really awkward to me. Why would you describe a forest as "indomitable"? YMMV.

[*] The PCs are supposed to deliver the macguffin from the previous adventure to the city-state of Seaquen. To avoid pursuit, they take a shortcut through a forest that has been magically burning for 40 years. Unfortunately, they get trapped in the forest because a wizard did it. And by "wizard", I mean a trillith: one of a race of poorly-defined monsters with poorly-defined plot powers.

[*] To escape the forest, there are two factions of faeries that nobody gives a shit about and the PCs have to kill one of them. They can either kill the trillith or makes friends with it, but it doesn't matter because regardless of what the PCs do he shows up in adventure #9 in order to use his poorly-defined plot powers again.

[*] If you take the shortest path through this adventure, it would probably take about 10 minutes to complete, but presumably the players are supposed to aimlessly wander around instead.

[*] There's another NPC ally that the PCs can collect, assuming they didn't kill her. They can also learn the Song of Forms, a magical song that solidifies incorporeal creatures (which show up semi-frequently in this adventure path).
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Post by amethal »

hogarth wrote:War of the Burning Sky #2: The Indomitable Fire Forest of Innenotdar (lvl 3-5)

[*] If you take the shortest path through this adventure, it would probably take about 10 minutes to complete, but presumably the players are supposed to aimlessly wander around instead.
I think the "adventure path" format lets them down a bit here. If I was rewriting the campaign, the Fire Forest would be a lot shorter, leaving more space for exploring Seaquen. But no, part 2 is the fire forest, so fire forest is what we get.

I did like that the answer to "how did the forest catch fire in the first place" could potentially become some (moderately) useful blackmail information later on in the campaign, but I don't remember that it was particularly called out in part 2.
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Post by hogarth »

amethal wrote: I think the "adventure path" format lets them down a bit here. If I was rewriting the campaign, the Fire Forest would be a lot shorter, leaving more space for exploring Seaquen. But no, part 2 is the fire forest, so fire forest is what we get.
What did your players think of the adventure? Frankly, the seela (the faerie guys) seem a bit lame to me and as a player I don't like hit-and-run enemies (in this case, a bearded devil) very much.
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Post by amethal »

hogarth wrote:
amethal wrote: I think the "adventure path" format lets them down a bit here. If I was rewriting the campaign, the Fire Forest would be a lot shorter, leaving more space for exploring Seaquen. But no, part 2 is the fire forest, so fire forest is what we get.
What did your players think of the adventure? Frankly, the seela (the faerie guys) seem a bit lame to me and as a player I don't like hit-and-run enemies (in this case, a bearded devil) very much.
They seemed to quite like the adventure but they aren't a very picky bunch. They didn't take it too seriously - the fire forest was just an obstacle between them and where they wanted to get to. They were ok with making at least some attempt at helping the seela, but they were quite contemptuous of them.

They enjoyed the bearded devil, but I think that was because they got to spend quite a lot of time talking to it (which is not something they'd done before with fiends) and I think I did a good job of role-playing a believable devilish mindset.
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Post by hogarth »

War of the Burning Sky #3: Shelter from the Storm (lvl 5-7)

[*] Suggested listening: Shelter From The Storm

[*] The PCs cross a swamp and finish their journey to Seaquen. After delivering the macguffin, they hang around for a bit doing various vaguely defined side quests (or not -- there's a bunch of hooks for brief side quests, but not much motivation for the PCs to follow any of them up). Then the princess of Elfland comes to propose a rather one-sided alliance and the PCs (hopefully) stop a magical playhouse from blowing up.

[*] The climax of the adventure features a magical hurricane hitting the city and the PCs are the only ones who can stop it because reasons/a wizard did it.

[*] Seaquen is supposed to be the PCs' home base for the rest of the adventure path, so there are another bunch of NPC allies to introduce. Of course the higher-level NPCs are nowhere to be found when it comes time for the low-level PCs to save the day, naturally. One of the NPCs is a Ragesian mole, although she might switch allegiance if the PCs give her a good reason to do so.

[*] The best part of this adventure? No trilliths!
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Post by hogarth »

War of the Burning Sky #4: The Mad King's Banquet (lvl 7-9)

[*] Suggested listening: In The Hall Of The Mountain King

[*] The title is only four words long, but two of them are spoilers. Well done!

[*] The PCs go to discuss an alliance with the king of Dassen (Seaquen's neighbour). Spoiler alert: the king is mad. For shits and giggles, the kingdom of Dassen is a knock-off of Westeros from "A Song of Fire and Ice", complete with a bloody civil war, a ludicrously tall wall of ice, and people sworn to protect the north from invasion.

[*] Once they reach the capital of Dassen, the PCs get caught up in a murder mystery, despite the fact that, in D&D-land, murders and mysteries can usually be solved by magic in about five minutes. The (mad) king, under the influence of one of those stupid fucking trillith monsters, chases the PCs away from the capital city and they end up in the part of the country bordering Ragesia.

[*] The PCs gather together allied armies from the Seven or Eight Kingdoms and then face off against the (mad) king's army. The results of the battle are determined by how many allies the PCs gather and how many commando missions the PCs successfully complete, but in any case the two sides sign a truce and the (mad) king invites the heads of all the noble houses to a banquet. There's some plot stupidity involving magic book that is supposed to protect the nobles from evil banquets but the book gets stolen and there's a magic insanity poison in the food, yadda yadda yadda. In the end, the PCs are supposed to kill the trillith. They can also kill or depose the (formerly mad) king, but the gist is that Seaquen and Dassen end up as allies.

[*]Generally speaking, I like the pseudo-wargame mechanic where the PCs do little missions that award points and then the GM compares the total to a chart to describe the results of the battle. Paizo used a version in the Savage Tide adventure path, and it something similar was also used in Mass Effect 3. Of course, lots of people hated Mass Effect 3, but I liked it a lot.
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Post by Blicero »

Could you go into a bit more detail on how the battle works? E.g., how much difference is there between the worst possible result and the best possible result? Would either have a noticeable effect on the rest of the campaign? Is gathering allies relatively easy, or is it something a group could plausibly fuck up or miss out on? Are the commando missions difficult?
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Post by hogarth »

Blicero wrote:Could you go into a bit more detail on how the battle works? E.g., how much difference is there between the worst possible result and the best possible result? Would either have a noticeable effect on the rest of the campaign?
The PCs' side can win, lose or draw in the battle. As you might suspect, this doesn't have much effect on the plot; after the battle, there is a peace conference in the capital city, no matter who wins or loses.

At the end of the adventure, there is an opportunity for the PCs to pick basically whomever they want (within reason, I suppose) for the next king of Dassen. Presumably that would have an effect on the people of Dassen, but the impact on the campaign as a whole is limited to a slight bonus or penalty in the final adventure (which also uses the "outcome is determined by point total" technique). The adventure mentions that the worst-case scenario is that Dassen falls back into civil war (bad for Dassen, mostly indifferent to the overall plot).
Blicero wrote: Is gathering allies relatively easy, or is it something a group could plausibly fuck up or miss out on?
There is a time limit, so if the PCs have a fast movement speed they can talk to both the dwarf lord and the wizard lady with time to do other stuff; if they're slow, maybe they can only talk to one of them. There are also some pine faeries that are possible to turn from enemies to allies, if the players think of it.
Blicero wrote: Are the commando missions difficult?
They're not any more or less difficult than the usual D&D encounter, as far as I can tell. The climactic mission claims to be EL 14, but it happens in multiple waves, the PCs have various allies, and you don't have to kill all of the bad guys to claim victory.
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Post by hogarth »

War of the Burning Sky #5: Mission to the Monastery of Two Winds (lvl 9-11)

[*] Suggested listening: Against The Wind

[*] While the PCs were in Dassen in adventure #4, another party of adventurers went to a mountaintop monastery dedicated to weather magic, located on the border of Ostalin and Sindaire. The purpose was two-fold: to ask for help bypassing the magical firestorm surrounding Emperor Coaltongue of Ragesia's last known whereabouts (in Sindaire) and to secretly investigate the source of the magic hurricane from adventure #3. The emperor owned a powerful artifact called the Torch of the Burning Sky that can create portals capable of transporting entire armies (among other abilities), so it would be a very useful asset in the war. Seaquen loses contact with the NPC adventurers and the PCs are sent in to complete the mission.

[*] When the PCs arrive at the village at the foot of the mountain, they find a company of Ragesian soldiers in a fucking stupid bullshit trillith magic trance. The trillith stops the trance (probably by dying) and the PCs fight some Ragesian soldiers and then the GM is supposed to lead the PCs by the nose to fight a sorcerer/monk in a secret magical lab.

[*] In the end, the PCs get to meet the head monks (two brothers: a cleric/monk and a sorcerer/monk) who give them a doohickey to get them past the magical firestorm. The sorcerer/monk (Pilus) pretends to be an ally to Seaquen, but he's really out for himself, Saruman-style.

[*]In case it's not clear, this adventure has a real monk boner.
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War of the Burning Sky #6: Tears of the Burning Sky (lvl 11-13)

[*] Suggested listening: Fire And Rain

[*] With their magical doohickey to keep away the firestorm, the PCs head to the fortress where Emperor Coaltongue was last seen in order to find his super-weapon (the Torch of the Burning Sky) before the Ragesians do.

[*] The fortress is now full of flaming skeletons that spam out pulses of negative energy that damage the PCs and heal undead. Also, there are a bunch of gnome and halfling "allies" (including one trillith spy) that are basically useless comic relief; nevertheless they demand 40% of any treasure found in the fortress. Good luck with that.

[*] The PCs go up an elevator shaft full of traps and the top level of the fortress is partially in the Astral Plane. They fight even more flaming skeletons and the trillith spy possesses a dragon skeleton. In the end, they discover the torch isn't there. <sad trombone> On the bright side, the country of Sindaire decides to join the Seaquen alliance.
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Post by amethal »

hogarth wrote:War of the Burning Sky #6: Tears of the Burning Sky (lvl 11-13)
Also, there are a bunch of gnome and halfling "allies" (including one trillith spy) that are basically useless comic relief; neverthless they demand 40% of any treasure found in the fortress. Good luck with that.
In my campaign, their life expectancy was roughly 6 seconds from when they made that proposal.

Only the spy survived the first round, which was a pretty big give away that he was more than he seemed.

It felt to me (but not to the players, obviously) that the campaign had lost its "soul" with the massacre of the gnomes. My campaign report story hour on ENWorld stopped after that session (and since it was running quite a bit behind real time, never got very far into the Monastery adventure) and was never resumed.
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Post by hogarth »

amethal wrote:
hogarth wrote:War of the Burning Sky #6: Tears of the Burning Sky (lvl 11-13)
Also, there are a bunch of gnome and halfling "allies" (including one trillith spy) that are basically useless comic relief; neverthless they demand 40% of any treasure found in the fortress. Good luck with that.
In my campaign, their life expectancy was roughly 6 seconds from when they made that proposal.

Only the spy survived the first round, which was a pretty big give away that he was more than he seemed.

It felt to me (but not to the players, obviously) that the campaign had lost its "soul" with the massacre of the gnomes.
Ouch. I can't say I'd blame them, but it does seem a little murder-hoboey to slaughter a halfling paladin (say).
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Post by amethal »

hogarth wrote:Ouch. I can't say I'd blame them, but it does seem a little murder-hoboey to slaughter a halfling paladin (say).
I think it might have been partly the way it was done - they briefly pretended to go along with the idea, then launched a devastating surprise attack. There was no attempt to warn them off, make a counter offer, or anything; murder was their immediate go-to option and there wasn't even a token show of regret at any point.

Their argument would be that they had no idea how dangerous the gnomes were, so they couldn't risk losing the advantage of surprise and potentially imperilling their own quest. (I'm not sure how much knowledge they had at that point, but there had been quite a few hints by this stage that their mission might be even more important than it first appeared - they were, in fact, literally trying to save the world from destruction.)

They also blamed me, the DM, for putting the gnomes in harms way in the first place.

So we have murder as the first resort, the end justifies the means, and the victims had it coming. Anywhere outside of a D&D alignment debate there wouldn't be any difficulty in allocating a moral category to that behaviour.

The players were, and remain, my friends. I'm probably the only one who even remembers the incident.
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Post by hogarth »

What did your players think of the fight on the trapped elevator or the fight in zero-gravity? Were they interesting or mostly a pain in the ass to run?
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Post by amethal »

hogarth wrote:What did your players think of the fight on the trapped elevator or the fight in zero-gravity? Were they interesting or mostly a pain in the ass to run?
I can't really remember any details of those, so I guess that rules out interesting!
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Post by hogarth »

War of the Burning Sky #7: Trial of Echoed Souls (lvl 13-15)

[*] Suggested listening: Symphony For Shafted Souls

[*] The PCs follow the trail of the Torch to Ycengled Phuurst (what a dumb name for a forest -- every time I see it, I think of Hans Moleman saying "Boo-urns") in Elfland. It turns out the phuurst is haunted because the king of Elfland had almost all of the inhabitants chained to the trees until they died of hunger or thirst (thuurst?). Apparently genocide is not very evil because the elf king's alignment is Neutral. Oh, and he also had the forest of Innenotdar set on fire, which means that he's responsible for forty years of burning people alive.

[*] The PCs dick around in the haunted phuurst for a while until someone tells them how to follow a magic path that leads to an Ewok village in a pocket dimension. Emperor Coaltongue's assassins are hiding out in the treehouses. The adventure suggests shooting arrows at the PCs and trying to get them to fall into traps until the players get tired of it, and then they can fight the shadowdancer who has the Torch.

[*] It turns out that the Torch is actually damaged and doesn't work. Somehow the PCs are supposed to figure out that the Torch needs a new piece of dragon soul to power it (the adventure is noncommittal on how they should discover this) but coincidentally there's a new soul factory in a nearby temple. The PCs pass through some tests meant to prove that they're worthy or some horseshit like that but they're followed close behind by the princess of Elfland and some of her renegade Ragesian allies. At least I think they're renegades; otherwise why are they helping the Elflanders? At any rate, there's a big fight over the Torch, then the winners have to fight the evil psion/monk who rules the temple and then the Torch can be fixed, presuming the PCs can guess the not-at-all-obvious way of getting the new piece of soul into the Torch.

[*] Another trillith-free adventure.

[*] My main gripe about this adventure is that it's lazy when it comes to linking the encounters together. At each stage, you're supposed to let the players dither around for a while until you tell them where to go next. That's weak writing.
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