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

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

War of the Burning Sky #8: O, Wintry Song of Agony (lvl 15-16)

[*] Suggested listening: King Of Pain

[*] Remember the stolen plans from adventure #1? It turns out they're plans for another super-weapon the Ragesians were developing (in their arctic Fortress of Solitude) that allows a spellcaster to cast spells with huge range and/or area of effect. It's defended by a small army so the PCs are supposed to teleport their own army into position with the Torch and then sneak into the fortress to dismantle the weapon while the defenders are distracted. Pilus (the sorcerer/monk from adventure #5) has a mile-long living airship with a laser eye that he uses to knock out the fortress's main defences. That probably sounds cooler than it actually is.

[*] It turns out that the super-weapon is indestructible unless the power can be turned off. What powers the super-weapon? Why, the power of fucking bullshit trillith plot magic, of course! The trillith causes pain to a bunch of kidnapped spellcasters (remember the bounty hunters from adventure #1?) and that charges up the dilithium crystals in the warp drive or whatever. So the PCs either kill the trillith or convince it to leave and then they kill the bad guys before the base self-destructs.

[*]I kind of like adventures that call back to previous adventures, so this at least has that going for it.
Last edited by hogarth on Tue Jan 17, 2017 11:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
momothefiddler
Knight-Baron
Posts: 883
Joined: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:55 am
Location: United States

Post by momothefiddler »

hogarth wrote:So the PCs either kill the trillith or convince it to leave and then they kill the bad guys before the base self-destructs.
Can they kill the kidnapped, presumably helpless power source instead? That is, is that possibility acknowledged in the writeup?
User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

momothefiddler wrote:
hogarth wrote:So the PCs either kill the trillith or convince it to leave and then they kill the bad guys before the base self-destructs.
Can they kill the kidnapped, presumably helpless power source instead? That is, is that possibility acknowledged in the writeup?
It's not helpless -- the adventure suggests that it's trapped, but then it also says that it can just leave if the adventurers convince it to.

But yes, the party can absolutely kill it and in fact the assumption is that the party will fight it: "[The trillith] has been trapped for so long that it assumes any corporeal creature is its foe and is automatically Hostile."

EDIT: Wait, do you mean the kidnapped magic-users that are also used to power the device? It doesn't mention that as a possibility, but it would probably work. They don't have any of the hundreds (?) of level-drained magic-users statted up, though.
Last edited by hogarth on Wed Jan 18, 2017 1:58 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
momothefiddler
Knight-Baron
Posts: 883
Joined: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:55 am
Location: United States

Post by momothefiddler »

hogarth wrote:EDIT: Wait, do you mean the kidnapped magic-users that are also used to power the device? It doesn't mention that as a possibility, but it would probably work. They don't have any of the hundreds (?) of level-drained magic-users statted up, though.
That's what I meant, yes. Didn't catch that it was a matter of hundreds of them, though. Hm. Might not be as simple a solution as I was thinking.
User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

I just double-checked: it says "roughly one thousand inmates" but "the majority are 1st-level clerics, druids, sorcerers, and wizards. Few are above 4th level".

The adventure certainly leaves open the possibility of leaving them there to die, though.
Last edited by hogarth on Wed Jan 18, 2017 4:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
amethal
Apprentice
Posts: 63
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 10:35 pm

Post by amethal »

hogarth wrote: [*]I kind of like adventures that call back to previous adventures, so this at least has that going for it.
Call backs are nice, but in this case you'd better hope that you didn't fuck up the first adventure.

And I seem to remember that not only did the first adventure NOT tell the DM that the plot was going to be in serious trouble way down the road if the PCs don't end up with the case, it pretty much said at the time that it wasn't a big deal if that happened.

I think it was round about this time that there was a shit storm in a teacup on ENWorld or Circvs Maximvs or somewhere about Ryan Nock stealing other people's ideas without attribution. Made me smile when I realised that the bad guys' plan in War of the Burning Sky - kidnap lots of spell casters and use them to power an Engine of Doom - is the same as the one in the AD&D 2nd edition boxed set adventure Night Below. (Actual adventures are completely different, however.)
User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

amethal wrote:And I seem to remember that not only did the first adventure NOT tell the DM that the plot was going to be in serious trouble way down the road if the PCs don't end up with the case, it pretty much said at the time that it wasn't a big deal if that happened.
It's not a big deal in the sense that the GM can make anything happen that he wants. For instance, the GM can have the elf king or Katrina or some random Ragesian defector spill the beans on where the Death Star is located. Of course, that means that all of the PCs' choices and actions are ultimately meaningless, but we knew that already, right?
User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

War of the Burning Sky #9: The Festival of Dreams (lvl 16-17)

[*] Suggested listening: Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)

[*] Finally the PCs have their super-weapon working and the bad guys' super-weapon is destroyed, so it's time to take their allies (from Seaquen, Dassen and Sindaire) to their home town of Gate Pass (the location of adventure #1) and kick Ragesian ass. But before the armies of peons can get to fighting each other, the PCs need to take out the Ragesian army's most powerful ally: a red dragon with a mask made out of 4 healing, buffing, counterspelling liches.

[*] After the dragon is taken care of, the PCs can help defend one of the gates (using some stupid mass archery rules that didn't exist the last time the PCs were fighting platoons of mooks) and then they have a meeting with the king of Elfland where he proposes another one-sided alliance (the PCs can use Diplomacy to negotiate better terms). Then an allied trillith (Metamorphosis) asks the PCs to rescue the trillith from adventure #2 (Indomitability) from a dread wraith archmage.

[*] Once the Ragesians see that they're losing, they offer to surrender. The surrender takes place in front of a big statue of Emperor Coaltongue, but a bunch of enemy trilliths start attacking. After a few turns of fighting, the rest of the trilliths merge with the giant statue to form...MECHA-TRILLITH!! It's a seriously tough puzzle monster: 2007 hp (divided into various body parts), the equivalent of hardness 40 (except for conveniently indicated video-game-style weak spots), always rolls 20 on saves until the head is destroyed, has a fire shield that prevents line of effect, etc., but the PCs are assisted by the trillith Metamorphosis. Metamorphosis can create shields for the PCs or move them around, but her biggest ability is that she can sacrifice her life to turn a PC into...MEGA-PC!! I'm not sure if it would be fun or hokey in practice, but at least it looks kind of epic.

[*]This is probably the adventure I liked reading the most out of the series. It has cool stuff like seeing your buddies from Adventure #1 turned into grizzled war veterans, plus you get to show off your high-level awesomeness by killing a bunch of peons, plus MECHA-TRILLITH! But from my experience playing at these levels, it'd probably be a bit of a slog to go through as a player.
Last edited by hogarth on Tue Jun 22, 2021 12:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

I just realised I never finished reviewing the last 3 modules. So here goes:

War of the Burning Sky #10: Sleep, Ye Cursed Child (lvl 17-18)

* Suggested listening: Welcome To My Nightmare

* The PCs have liberated their home town of Gate Pass, possibly absorbing part of the Ragesian army into their growing list of allies. But one of the good-guy trillith reveals that the bad-guy trillith are planning to create a super-trillith that will trillith-ify the entire continent (which would kill anybody too weak to survive the process).

* The PCs have to travel to a bullshit dream-reality that is conveniently located beneath Gate Pass, and then pass through some trippy dream-encounters (which you can't Teleport or Wind Walk past) to get to the castle of the bad-guy trillith.

* The bad-guy trillith is creating new minions from the dreams of a sleeping psionic dragon. So after the PCs beat up the head bad-guy trillith, they have the option of going into the dragon's dream and trying to defeat a super-trillith (Annihilation). Annihilation is very tough (absorbs magic, lots of HP, deadly breath weapon), but killing the sleeping dragon works too.

* I appreciate that the writer at least put some thought into making an adventure that high-level PCs can't just zip through, but it seems a little bit like an arbitrary railroad.

* Best part -- after this, you're almost done with the stupid trillith.
Last edited by hogarth on Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:56 am, edited 3 times in total.
User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

War of the Burning Sky #11: Under the Eye of the Tempest (lvl 18-19)

* Suggested listening: Fly Like An Eagle

* This is easily the worst adventure in the whole series. Nay, it is one of the worst adventures I have ever seen. Clearly it had some production issues, because the description in the Campaign Guide lists a number of things that aren't in the actual adventure (which is shorter than every other installment). It's obvious that they had to whip something up at the last minute, and it suffers badly from it.

* The sorcerer/monk from adventures #5 and #8 picks this time to attack the city of Seaquen with his mile-long living airship with the laser eye. So the PCs have to destroy it. Sounds kind of cool, right?

* Wrong! The airship is a linear dungeon with like, 5 rooms. And the rooms have incredibly puny monsters like CR 8 and 9 destrachans and advanced digesters that would hardly even act as a speed bump to level 18+ PCs. And then in the last room the whole party of PCs can pound the sorcerer/monk into mush because he doesn't even have any decent bodyguards. The end.

* What a waste of time and money. The PCs can pick up some allies from the country of Ostalin, but that's about it.
User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

War of the Burning Sky #12: The Beating of the Aquiline Heart (lvl 19-20)

* Suggested listening: Owner Of A Lonely Heart

* The leader of the Ragesians (an epic cleric/wizard/mystic theurge) has seen which way the tide is turning in the war, so she starts work on her final project: controlling the continent by performing a magic ritual on the "heart of the world". So she is holed up in an undisclosed location with her remaining armies to guard her.

* The PCs teleport in to the Ragesian imperial palace to stop a divination-jamming ritual, then they can teleport all of their accumulated armies and allies to the scene of the final battle.

* The final conflict is kind of like the battle in adventure #4: the PCs take on a number of missions (e.g. preventing assassinations, killing enemy commanders, cancelling magical defenses) and the number of successes determines how well the battle ends. The missions are full of cameos by previous allies dating all the way back to adventure #1, which I liked. On the other hand, a bunch of the missions involve a horseshit mass combat system where each unit is treated kind of like a swarm that gets +20 to attack and damage for no reason.

* Once the army-vs-army battle is finished, the PCs have to sneak into the magical cavern where the heart is kept and fight the Ragesian leader and her minions. One interesting twist: to completely foil the leader's plans, they have to use the Torch of the Burning Sky to destroy the Aquiline Heart, but that will destroy the world unless someone volunteers to take the place of the heart. (There is quite a bit of foreshadowing about how "a sacrifice can heal the world", so it's not coming completely out of nowhere.)
RelentlessImp
Knight-Baron
Posts: 701
Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2010 11:03 am

Post by RelentlessImp »

What the shit am I reading right now? First you probably should've linked to the one I actually finished. Second, at level 19 to 20 you should be absolutely destroying any Mass combat fights if the campaign setting is at all following the demographics charts in the DMG. also that +20 to attack and damage is actually in the rules somewhere as an easier way to deal with mass combat. I believe it's in the DMG2. Also, that penultimate adventure is hilarious in its pointlessness.

But at no point at level 20 should you be bothering with point-based bullshit like RHoD or Savage Tide.

EDIT: Also if I remember right a few years back ENWorld was shilling this really fucking hard and gave it a bunch of awards.`
Last edited by RelentlessImp on Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:22 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

RelentlessImp wrote:But at no point at level 20 should you be bothering with point-based bullshit like RHoD or Savage Tide.
If the choices are:

(a) play normal D&D and end up with a result like "the good guys lost some soldiers but the bad guys lost more soldiers", or

(b) waste several hours playing some dude's shitty homebrew wargame and end up with a result like "the good guys lost some soldiers but the bad guys lost more soldiers"

then I'll take option (a). I just have no interest in wargames.
RelentlessImp
Knight-Baron
Posts: 701
Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2010 11:03 am

Post by RelentlessImp »

I guess it's more acceptable here than it was in Savage Tide as the mass-combat thing was preceded by months of downtime (with a few things you could do) where you literally could have summoned up a bunch of planar allies that could roflstomp a bunch of shitty pirates. Then again, I suppose it depends on how much foreknowledge and prep time you have when you learn of the ritual to fuck the world over.
User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

That's a good point -- there will be a certain size level where it's pointless to abstract a battle with points, etc. because it could be resolved with a (mostly) normal D&D session anyways.

The final battle in WotBS has tens (hundreds?) of thousands of participants, so some kind of abstraction is necessary. And there are explicitly a bunch of planar allies (e.g. a cleric of a sea god brings a bunch of water elemental allies), so that is definitely an option.
Post Reply