The Gaming Den

This is filling me with nostalgia and a desire to review The Mines of Bloodstone module that I DM'd in grade school. The most stupid and fucked up dungeon ecology evar.

To digress, the only time I've had that module's stupidity rivaled was the time I phoned in an impromptu session and did an "adventure" that solely comprised of sequential combats wherein a random CR appropriate monster stormed in after the party finished killing their last foe and declared "You killed my pet ____!" before the next fight began, over and over. I think it included a giant wasp, an ogre and a wyrmling green dragon at the end.

None of the wealth concerns raised are true in 3.5, your house rules notwithstanding.

Wealth by Level is a rule in 3.5 you see, if you actually summon things to mine up unlimited wealth, or Wall of Iron your way to prosperity, or any of that shit, the DM is required to take it all back off you until you fit into the Wealth by Level structure again. It's a rule.

Getting offered 16k to play D&D is thus fine, because you could get it some other way playing papers and paychecks and then arbitrarily lose it all because you didn't level, or you could get it here and go play some D&D and level up and get to keep it. Again, it's a rule.


Ditto for binding chains and stuff, there's rules for having a henchman (it's a feat you're not allowed to take) and things which are not henchmen are self-willed NPCs who will fuck you over because they totally have their own agendas. Even Wish spells have a bullshit clause built in, where you can only really keep the things that it's appropriate for you to have.

Like, the Wish economy involves much less punative bullshit, and WBL is too fucking small by far, and so on and so on, but don't be complaining about how the designers aren't respecting your house rules in the official modules.

I haven't run Tides of Dread, though it really is my favorite part of the adventure. From reading the Paizo forums, it seems that Vanthus tends to get defeated quickly and easily, but that's somewhat counterbalanced by the gauntlets of yuan-ti wizards and vrocks that the PCs have to run through to get at him. So he's an easy fight, but some semi-optimized groups are engaging him at 1/4 HP remaining and only a few spells left.

I can't really comment on Lightless Depths, because I can't read it. It just makes my eyes glaze over. I can't even read your review of it because it repels me so much. I'm not sure why, but it's very much not to my taste.

tussock wrote:bullshit

That is fucking stupid. Stop being an idiot. For one thing, the DMG never calls out the Wealth-By-Level as an actual rule (except in the case of the much later section on page 199 on Creating Characters Above 1st Level, where it makes them hard rules for starting wealth), it always calls it a guideline. Second, Paizo isn't respecting the WBL, if I went back and totted up the treasure a four-person party would be falling short of the WBL. Third, the DMG for 3.5 never tells you to take shit away from PCs, you're thinking of the asshole tone of the D&D Basic and AD&D DMGs that tell MCs that it's their job to be an asshole to their players. It's not a fucking houserule to put together the rules for scrolls of Shapechange, Planar Binding, and core spells to assume that PCs can generate infinite wealth at this level. It's a combinatorial of the rules that have basis in core.

I think you need to reread page 135 of the DMG because I've spent more time on that page than is fucking healthy due to my penchant for building characters.

Fuck, even the reference to page 13 even says "It's easier to fix them by altering the challenges than by changing anything about the PCs and their equipment" under the header "KEEPING GAME BALANCE". 3.5's DMG is about as well-written with its MC advice as could be and got rid of the jackass "Fuck the players" tone from previous editions.

EDIT: And there are rules for having henchmen beyond fucking Leadership, go read PHB page 132 on Hireling, Trained and Hireling, Untrained. These are Nodwicks. The rules for planar binding itself supersede those and are a series of Diplomacy and opposed Charisma checks to get what you want. Seriously, go read the rules you're touting are houserules.

EDIT 2: Furthermore, the 'guideline' it says the Wealth By Level Rules are to be used for is for building adventures, not for constraining the PCs.

mlangsdorf wrote: I can't really comment on Lightless Depths, because I can't read it. It just makes my eyes glaze over. I can't even read your review of it because it repels me so much. I'm not sure why, but it's very much not to my taste.

Yeah, it does it to me too, the sheer amount of page space wasted on backstories the PCs won't encounter or interact with is doing its best to stop me finishing.

Part Three: City of Madness
Jesus fuck okay we've gotten away from the reams of backstory that could have been better summed up. Honestly, as much as I liked their tone and the writing style here, jesus christ does this scenario do its best to keep you from wanting to finish it with reams of wasted space. Thankfully this ends here, so this half of the scenario is much, much more readable.

The PCs have finally reached Golismorga, and here is where the rest of the adventure will take place; Parts Four and Five detail encounter locations so you can kill kopru and destroy Tlaloc's Tear and end the shadow pearl production. Here, anyways, there's another site where they're being produced.

K: Welcome to Golismorga, 15,000ft below sea level. This is where the PCs enter, and it's a 200ft cliff up from Golismorga itself. One thing I want to talk about for a moment; this is five miles below sea level, give or take. There is no mention of the problems that arise from going that deep, such as increased heat and breathing problems, but the PCs might have purchased or made themselves some necklaces of adaptation so that's okay at this level.

L: Secondary entrances that end at the Curtain, holding back tons of water.

M: More entrances to Golismorga, these go deeper into the earth and end at the Curtain, holding back tons of seawater, and exit out in underwater exits beyond.

N: 100-300ft deep chasms that commonly have ropers, monstrous vermin, and climbing oozes.

O: The Pillars of Y'chak; these are columns of violet light that burn. They're monuments to the Elder Evil Y'chak, one of the few who takes an active interest in destroying civilizations. Going within 50ft prompts a DC 30 Fort save or nauseate for 2d6 rounds. Going into one of them prompts DC 30 Fortitude saves or be destroyed in a manner that can't be brought back without wish, miracle or true resurrection.

P and Q are the focus of the next two parts. P is the crater that holds Tlaloc's Tear, and Q is a ziggurat full of kopru.

There are some other encounters here:

First off, there are two random encounters of kopru scouts you can encounter while wandering around here, they consist of 4 basic CR 6 kopru and 8 basic troglodytes that carry the kopru around on palanquin. They attempt to dominate your PCs then fight them, then run to Q to alert the rest of the kopru.

There's a random encounter with a devourer that can be used to guide PCs to P and Q but he wants to eat the PCs even if you do.

The buildings here are built of fleshy materials, and at one point there's a loud scream that comes echoing back through the fleshy buildings.

There's a pair of water pools that are actually Shaboaths, 2 CR 10 cold-subtyped constructs who are 11HD and can create walls of ice once per minute. They're closet trolls, though.

Wandering through the city can cause one of the rotting buildings near them to collapse, for an 80ft slide of skinned flesh with a 40ft bury zone and a 20ft slide zone. It's treated as an avalanche, and any creature damaged by it contracts red ache on a failed DC 15 fort save.

After visiting P, what you do there awakens a brain collector which is a CR 7 aberration that casts as a 6th level sorcerer but has more spells per day. It has an auto-death attack it can take as a full round action that pulls out a PC's brain. It can eat one of its twelve stored brains for free metamagic along the lines of: silent and stilled, reach spell, and use a spell that targets a single creature as a duskblade would through its bite attack as an immediate action.

And finally, a purple worm that has 120hp out of its 200 allotted.

Part Four: Tlaloc's Crater

This crater was made when Tlaloc dropped Tlaloc's Tear on this place at the Olman's prayers to rid the place of water and get rid of the aboleths. It contains an advanced brain collector loremaster 4 who is studying the Tear in an attempt to awaken its power to rend time and space and let it return home so it can become an epic creature. Nobody told it that the epic rules are a joke book, I guess.

Anyways, the CR 14 encounter tries to run away at 40hp with dimension door unless it realizes the PCs are here to destroy the Tear, in which case it fights to the death. It likes to run through patches of mold to trigger spore explosions and throw PCs into the slime around the pit.

Tlaloc's Tear itself is a stone representation of Tlaloc's head, and is cracked and appears to be slowly crumbling to dust through erosion. An artifact that can be wore away by the ages? Damn, Tlaloc. Destroying the stone head prompts a sudden rumbling as the Curtain comes down and water starts to rush into Golismorga, but will take 16 hours before it floods. Doing so is a CR 12 award.

Part Five: The Heart of Madness

Centering around an ancient aboleth ziggurat. The immediate area is occupied by 38 kopru, 16 kopru behemoths (CR 10 Large-sized kopru with potions of fly), 10 dark nagas, and 70 troglodyte slaves. They tend to stay around it. Now this could be a pretty interesting fight for the PCs but they are seriously overwhelmed by action advantage (barring planar binding shenanigans) so it suggests they create a distraction to lure the guardians around the temple away. Fighting them draws out the kopru Cleric 8/Thrall of Demogorgon 4.

Q1 is the temple exterior, guarded by 3 more Kopru Behemoths, who still have the Dominate Person and 12HD, potions of fly so they're not rendered useless by flying PCs, but without dominate person they're beatsticks that have a surprisingly okay saves (+8/+10/+10).

Q2 is full of eyes that notice the PCs entering unless invisible or disguised as kopru and alert the aforementioned Cleric to their presence who begins buffing himself. The ladder here is "optomized" for kopru and requires a DC 10 Climb check to navigate if you don't have a fishtail.

Q3 (mislabeled Z3) contains the kopru spiritual leader, a 20HD Cleric 8/thrall of Demogorgon 4. His buffs are air walk, spell resistance, bull's strength, divine favor, entropic shielding, protection from good and sanctuary. He still has the 1/day Dominate person and Feeblemind from his domains with decent DCs (21 at 5th level and going down from there). He can also, twice a day, take two full rounds worth of actions in one round. There's also a statue of Demogorgon here with a stone trapdoor near it.

He uses control water to flood the room, and he's not getting taken out by BFC spells with his saves (15/10/19) and especially not Evard's schoolgirl violation with his Grapple check of +28. He's a legitimately difficult encounter with his buffs up and access to breaking the action economy. He may actually escape to Q4 while the PCs are fighting him. Killing him or forcing him to escape means the PCs can find some treasure worth 2400gp, a ring of wizardry II, a necklace of adaptation and a decanter of endless water. The four eyes in Demogorgon's statue are black pearls worth 500gp.

Q4 is full of four black pools of black bile of the world, also known as liquid madness. It deals 1d6 Acid damage on contact and persists for 2 rounds, dealing double damage to creatures with the lawful subtype. Extended contact can contract evil diseases or spontaneously bestowed curses. The pools are connected by underground tunnels so the kopru cleric can dive in (after drinking a potion of resist acid) and pop out of each of the four pools to fuck with the PCs. There are eight unfinished shadow pearls spread among the four pools, but they need another month of steeping in the black bile of the world before they can be broken to unleash the savage tide.

The room is also home to the Bilewretch of Holashner; a CR 13 huge aberration with a breath weapon that expels a 30ft long line of black bile of the world, which it uses liberally while trying to stay out of the PCs' way. Its saves are also sort of impressive (+12/+13/+12) and is immune to acid, fire, inhaled toxins, mind-affecting and suffocation. It uses the pools the same way the cleric would, diving in and breathing out then reemerging to use its breath weapon. It also has a continual air walk cast on it that can't be dispelled, and its tentacles (4 at +19) seep black bile. While in the black bile it also gains fast healing 15.

So it's a closet troll that has some decent maneuverability and a space that's pretty much perfect for it to be a closet troll in. It has AC 29 and decent saves, so it's another fight where the PCs are obligated to grind it down and might take a loss just due to the shape of the room. They're also not required to have rings of freedom of movement by this point which would neuter the thing's +29 Grapple check. It's a CR 13 encounter.

Finishing up, destroying Tlaloc's Tear and the bilewretch ends their ability to create shadow pearls here. The PCs can leave via teleport, the way they came in, or via a shaft just above the ziggurat that leads to the next scenario in the central plateau of the Isle of Dread.

Our hypothetical PCs have gone from 59930xp to 79987; they reach 67012 at the Burning Pools, taking them to 12th level, and 13th after killing the bilewretch, assuming they don't take on the massive number of creatures outside the ziggurat - worth 13725xp. If they do that pushes them to 92100 experience, just past 14th level.

So what do I think of this scenario? Holy fuck does it try to make you stop reading it as it heaps backstory and backstory and backstory on you in Parts One and Two. It gets much less verbose and gets to the fucking point a lot more in parts Three through Five. Part Two bogs this down so hard for an MC to read through all the backstory but it involves the thought processes and history of two of the most important parts of getting the PCs to destroy the Tear and the Ziggurat, the Troglodyte Cleric and the only remaining awake aboleth.

That doesn't fucking excuse Part One and Part Two though. Part One is actually sorta okay, and about on par with any other individual part but JESUS CHRIST Part Two, there is just so fucking much bullshit going on that it actively pushes people away from it. The last three parts are sufficiently good that if you get past part two you won't mind going through the rest.

Closing out, we (or I) learn that F. Wesley Schinder was an Associate Editor of Dungeon who "believes the shorter the author bio, the -". James Lafond Sutter was an Assistant Editor who can't write an author bio.

TWO. FUCKING. EDITORS. WERE INVOLVED IN THIS. They WROTE IT. There are typos everywhere, inconsistencies (the 20ft passage was to the west, yet it seems to think the 20ft passage is to the south), and a shitload of verbose bullshit that doesn't go anywhere and doesn't matter to the PCs one whit and WASTES PAGE SPACE. This is fucking UNFORGIVABLE for something that comes from two people who EARN MONEY AS EDITORS. Fucking shit.

ishy wrote:

RelentlessImp wrote:This is Slipknot Peet, the Captain of the pirate ship in the harbor and ruler of the pirates. We get some more of Slipknot Peet's backstory detailing him as a pirate that raided Sasserine, was captured, escaped, yadda fucking yadda.

I hope his backstory was at least very metal.

Partially metal, partially Age of Exploration scurvy yar-har.

ishy wrote:

The thieving of the warehouse is being perpetrated by an ethereal filcher. Killing it is worth 0VP.

Is that a typo or are the PCs bothered for a 22 hp creature for no reason?

Nope, not a typo, it's pilfering stores and killing it nets you nothing but good feelings.

ishy wrote:

RelentlessImp wrote:If you try to take more than one thing (not counting the leather with the fang) or if you kill the aspect and loot the place, the person who takes more than their fair share has to make a DC 30 Will save or lose 6 points of their highest ability score as a bestow curse cast by a 20th level caster. Returning the treasure lets it be broken with a remove curse or break enchantment.

Wouldn't a break enchantment break the curse even if they did not return the treasure? Since that is what break enchantment is for.

I believe you need a caster level higher than the CL of the bestow curse to use break enchantment on it. I think it's inferring that you can't remove it til you return the treasure, which is kind of a dick move, but understandable as it's a curse from an actual god.

EDIT: It's a DC 31 vs 1d20+caster level (max 15) even then, so the PCs still need to roll a 20 to break it at this level.

ishy wrote:

The path splits here into a 30ft wide passage to the south and a 20ft wide to the west. A DC 20 Survival check made by someone with Track ... is a typo, as it says "the amount of traffic heading down the 20ft wide tunnel is much more than the trickle heading west". Parsing that is beyond me right now.

Yeah, I sure hope it is a typo. Requiring people to have track to see the road more travelled is just a dick move.

See my summation.

RelentlessImp wrote:

tussock wrote:bullshit

That is fucking stupid. Stop being an idiot. For one thing, the DMG never calls out the Wealth-By-Level as an actual rule (except in the case of the much later section on page 199 on Creating Characters Above 1st Level, where it makes them hard rules for starting wealth), it always calls it a guideline. Second, Paizo isn't respecting the WBL, if I went back and totted up the treasure a four-person party would be falling short of the WBL. Third, the DMG for 3.5 never tells you to take shit away from PCs, you're thinking of the asshole tone of the D&D Basic and AD&D DMGs that tell MCs that it's their job to be an asshole to their players.

1: only in that everything in the Dungeon Master's Guide is a guideline. You may as well point out that everything in the game is subservient to rule zero, the DMG meanwhile tells DMs how to run games of D&D, it's totally part of the game. Like the part that says ten thousand demons don't teleport in and kill you for being a dick.

2: the treasure you really get is always less than the WBL guidelines. WBL is an average for the treasure generator, but those functions have high outliers which raise the average but never appear in modules. The rules aren't any good, but they are the rules. p51 says to be nice and give out some more when players fall behind.

3: DMG p13, Handling unbalanced PCs. "An in-game solution might be to have an NPC Cleric use a miracle to rob her of that new ability". Explicitly done that way so you don't have to have an adult conversation with players about how they're breaking the game's power assumptions, including assumptions about Wealth by Level, in case they're a bunch of self-entitled assholes or something.
DMG p 51. Treasure per encounter. "The PCs needn't have average treasure at every stage of their careers, but if an imbalance persists for more than a few levels, you should take gradual action to correct it by awarding slightly more or slightly less treasure." My emphasis.

So just to be clear, if you have more money than the game assumes, the DM should either talk to you about that and tell you to stop, or give you less treasure until it evens out again, or just fucking take it off you. D&D.

It's not a fucking houserule to put together the rules for scrolls of Shapechange, Planar Binding, and core spells to assume that PCs can generate infinite wealth at this level. It's a combinatorial of the rules that have basis in core.

Seriously? You think it's not an unusual thing to look at a table of numbers that top out at under a million by 20th level, surrounded by advice to fuck over anyone who does better, and read it to say infinity at 9th level? You think that's not a house rule?

You know almost no one has heard of the Wish Economy, right?

The DMG says it's the DM's job to maintain balance. It says wealth is part of game balance. It says to constantly nerf, hotfix, and even houserule anything that is upsetting game balance, including wealth, and it says to tell players to not upset the game balance, including by accumulating excess wealth. The game fucking tells you how much wealth players should have, and tells you to not let that stay even a little bit out of line for very long.

EDIT: And there are rules for having henchmen beyond fucking Leadership, go read PHB page 132 on Hireling, Trained and Hireling, Untrained. These are Nodwicks.

Those are where you'll note it says to refer to the DMG, where it talks about low level people for mowing down skeleton mooks and who will just strait turn on you if you risk their necks. That you can pay 60sp to hire a 20th level Warrior who gets none of your XP or treasure when he kills everything for you doesn't matter, because no one does that. Zero people ever have done that.

The rules for planar binding itself supersede those and are a series of Diplomacy and opposed Charisma checks to get what you want. Seriously, go read the rules you're touting are houserules.

"Impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to."
"The creature might later seek revenge."
"Note that a clever recipient may subvert some instructions."
In light of how DMs are supposed to balance your character's power and wealth by constantly fucking with you and fixing whatever breaks on the fly, as a "guideline", I'm thinking there's plenty of outs before you hit infinite free selfish wishes from wise and charismatic Evil creatures who hate you and want to trick you and fuck you over anyway.

"Efreet are infamous for their hatred of servitude, desire for revenge, cruel nature, and ability to beguile and mislead."

EDIT 2: Furthermore, the 'guideline' it says the Wealth By Level Rules are to be used for is for building adventures, not for constraining the PCs.

No. That was true in 3.0 where the table was explicitly and only for starting characters above 1st level, but it's not for 3.5, where the same table is used as "One of the ways you can maintain measurable control of PC power is by strictly measuring their wealth, including their magic items."

What, you think you're supposed to "strictly track" PC wealth, for the purpose of "control of PC power", and then not actually fuck with people's wealth like it tells you to? Because you ignore the downsides of, oh, I don't know, Wishes?

"You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than those above, but doing so is dangerous. Such a task gives the DM the opportunity to fulfil your request without fulfilling it completely." Such as by imprisoning you forever with no save and such, being all monkey-paw about shit.

Now you'll argue that wishing for a chain of events that will include infinity wishes is not "greater" than wishing for a spell of 8th level or below, because bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla. Go for it, it's always funny.

---

Enjoying the review, BTW. Thanks for posting.

tussock wrote:
1: only in that everything in the Dungeon Master's Guide is a guideline. You may as well point out that everything in the game is subservient to rule zero, the DMG meanwhile tells DMs how to run games of D&D, it's totally part of the game. Like the part that says ten thousand demons don't teleport in and kill you for being a dick.

2: the treasure you really get is always less than the WBL guidelines. WBL is an average for the treasure generator, but those functions have high outliers which raise the average but never appear in modules. The rules aren't any good, but they are the rules. p51 says to be nice and give out some more when players fall behind.

3: DMG p13, Handling unbalanced PCs. "An in-game solution might be to have an NPC Cleric use a miracle to rob her of that new ability". Explicitly done that way so you don't have to have an adult conversation with players about how they're breaking the game's power assumptions, including assumptions about Wealth by Level, in case they're a bunch of self-entitled assholes or something.
DMG p 51. Treasure per encounter. "The PCs needn't have average treasure at every stage of their careers, but if an imbalance persists for more than a few levels, you should take gradual action to correct it by awarding slightly more or slightly less treasure." My emphasis.

So just to be clear, if you have more money than the game assumes, the DM should either talk to you about that and tell you to stop, or give you less treasure until it evens out again, or just fucking take it off you. D&D.

What the actual fuck, Tussock? You are on the page that says "No one likes to get something (a new magic sword, for example), only to have it taken away again because it was too unbalancing." Yet you choose to ignore that part of the guidelines (or, in your case, ironclad rules that cannot be altered in any way in any circumstances) in order to misrepresent a suggestion that a DM who allowed a stupidly unbalancing use of Wish that doesn't follow the actual guidelines of the spell (doubling spell slots) to be countered in-game in an attempt to stop that PC from being unbalanced in relation to the other members of their party.

tussock wrote:Those are where you'll note it says to refer to the DMG, where it talks about low level people for mowing down skeleton mooks and who will just strait turn on you if you risk their necks. That you can pay 60sp to hire a 20th level Warrior who gets none of your XP or treasure when he kills everything for you doesn't matter, because no one does that. Zero people ever have done that.

I've done that, which makes your argument automatically invalid. You kind of have to use those rules if you want to, you know, lead an army or band of mercenaries or anything like that, which people fucking love to do. In every campaign I've ever played at least one person has wanted to be in a position of power in some sort of organization where they get to boss other people around, and i am honestly astonished that you've never had anyone in your group do something similar.

tussock wrote:"You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than those above, but doing so is dangerous. Such a task gives the DM the opportunity to fulfil your request without fulfilling it completely." Such as by imprisoning you forever with no save and such, being all monkey-paw about shit.

Now you are just being actually retarded. Wish, PH page 302: "Create a magic item, or add to the powers of an existing magic item... When a wish creates or improves a magic item, you must pay twice the normal XP cost for crafting or improving the item, plus an additional 5,000 XP."

The spell allows you to create magic items and gives you guidelines on additional costs associated. Just because you can find a way to not pay the costs doesn't somehow make the effect of "create a magic item" somehow more powerful than the effect of "create a magic item."


Also, as a general rebuttal of your general insanity- the guidelines in the Dungeon Master's Guide aren't rules because we have actual examples of rules to compare them to! Here is just a random example of an actual rule: Player's Handbook 134 "An attack roll represents your attempt to strike your opponent on your turn in a round. When you make an attack roll, you roll a d20 and add your attack bonus. (Other modifiers may also apply to this roll.) If your result equals or beats the target’s Armor Class, you hit and deal damage." Please compare that to the guidelines in the DMG 135: "The baseline game for the D&D campaign uses this "wealth by level" guideline as a basis for balance in adventures. No adventure meant for 7th-level characters, for example, will require or assume that the party possesses a magic item that costs 20,000 gp." One of those things is a rule, where you specifically have to follow what it says because it's a goddamn rule. The other is a suggestion that DMs will want to carefully consider when running their campaign. Do you honestly not know the difference between those two things?

I'm really only going to respond to one part of it because tussock's argument is full of shit that isn't actually part of the rules, especially regarding Wish.

Now you'll argue that wishing for a chain of events that will include infinity wishes is not "greater" than wishing for a spell of 8th level or below, because bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla. Go for it, it's always funny.

Wish wrote:You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.)

This is equatable to this:

Rope Trick wrote:Note: It is hazardous to create an extradimensional space within an existing extradimensional space or to take an extradimensional space into an existing one.

Note the lack of rules or distinct examples as to what these dangers are. In the latter case, yes, we all know the classic example of the portable hole and bag of holding. You know what supports that? ACTUAL FUCKING RULES that state that putting one in the other FUCKS YOU OVER.

Bag of Holding wrote:If a bag of holding is placed within a portable hole a rift to the Astral Plane is torn in the space: Bag and hole alike are sucked into the void and forever lost. If a portable hole is placed within a bag of holding, it opens a gate to the Astral Plane: The hole, the bag, and any creatures within a 10-foot radius are drawn there, destroying the portable hole and bag of holding in the process.

Where's the difference between these three examples? In last one, there's actual rules text that says what happens if you fuck up. In the first two, there's a distinct lack of rules text that says what happens if you do this. If you're going to scream about the rules as they're written, then actually talk about the rules that are written, not the ones that only exist in your head. Thanks. Especially when I've already said I'm making assumptions based on the rules as-is, without mind caulk to stop them from going full retard.

EDIT: Before there's a response saying that X is greater than Y, Wish states quite clearly what it can and cannot do. Having things performed that is in the clear outlines of what it can do (make magic items) is not negated by it no longer requiring XP to do them by, say, having Wish as an SLA, a point already made but being reiterated here.

EDIT 2: One addendum. "A sane MC will never let it happen" is not a valid argument when the rules allow it. You don't personally know every MC. I allow shit like this as an MC, for example, so your argument is fallacious just on the basis of me alone. But I'm looking at this from the perspective of the rules as-is.

Scenario 7: City of Broken Idols
by Tito Leati

As a side note, does anybody know what the sign with a circle around an N means? Seeing it and not knowing what it means is bugging me.


Part One: The Missing Missionary
So, for once, we only have half a page of back- oh wait, that's pretty fucking standard. Our adventure hooks are the beloved "treasure map to this city" and "rescue a member of a church" when the party is capable of breaking the world over its knees. Don't you just love non-scaling adventure hooks? As an added bonus, "rescue a member of a church" is also one of the adventure hooks used to encourage the PCs to continue onwards as part of the scenario itself.

So, assuming the group rescued Jakara last time (the diseased and comatose Olman warrior who ran off after being saved) [remember him? I fucking wrote about him and I barely remember him], upon returning to Farshore they are greeted by Lavinia who welcomes them home and wants to hear all about their trip to the Upperdark (yes, there are four levels of Underdark, Golismorga definitely counts as Upperdark), and she informs them a man came with a message for them from a missionary named Noltus Innersol, who went to bring Pelor's light to the natives.

Enter Jakara at the Farshore Chapel, who is recovering from his ordeal. He's a member of the Tiger Clan, who you may remember from Zotzilaha's Wrath as being the hunter-gatherers of the Olmans. He's not part of the seven villages of Olmans, but rather from a village in a narrow valley west of the central plateau - which you might remember as being described as being the center of all of the Isle of Dread's ills. His village was killed by the "demons" who dwell in the City of Broken Isle and Jakara was only stopped by going to slaughter them by the arrival of Noltus Innersol who asked him to deliver a message to Farshore and spread Jakara's tribes knowledge of totems to the rest of the seven villages.

So after some back and forth involving Noltus's interest in the Isle of Dread, one of the Farshore residents, who spent a lot of time engaged in debate with Noltus, shows the party a stone disc that was the origin of Noltus's interest in the Isle of Dread; it depicts Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca (Olman god of the Moon) and Tonatiuh (Olman god of the Sun) working together on what appears to be a bow. Long story short, Noltus is hunting the bow, because if the mortal enemies Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca work together on it it must be important. The other adventure hook involves Lavinia being suspicious that the source of materials for the shadow pearls are coming from the City of Broken Idols.

Part Two: The Central Plateau
The central plateau of the Isle of Dread is presented as a problem; it says that teleport and flying magic is the easiest way, while parties that lack these have more problems. I'm going to go ahead and say that parties that lack flight and teleportation magic are no longer tall enough to ride this particular adventure as the random encounter chart for the plateau includes vrocks, spectres, rocs, pteranodons, hezrous, glabrezu, bar-lguras... and only the glabrezu comes as a solo encounter. The cliffs surrounding the central plateau are 3,000ft high, but there's a hidden path for the party expecting to be catered to for not selecting level-appropriate abilities that leads up.

Here's a map of the central plateau:

The focus of this scenario is in that dotted circle line, more specifically the Taboo Island, but there's a few other places of interest.

The first is the Pelorian camp. Noltus Innersol, when he came here, came at the head of a converted mass of Lizardmen, phanaton, and Olman, but all that remains in this camp is 11 Lizardmen (out of 36) who established this camp when Noltus went on to the Taboo island, to watch the skinwalker activity in this place. Approaching the camp sounds the alarm, and as long as the party doesn't act hostilely they get greeted warmly in the name of Pelor by the chieftan of the tribe and informed that Noltus has been missing for five days. The chieftan invites the party to remain at their camp. I'm not sure how these guys have remained alive instead of only losing 19, because the strongest member of the group is the chieftan, a Ranger 5/Cleric of Pelor 4, while the other 11 are standard lizardfolk.

Shortly after arriving or before leaving, one of the lizardfolk scouts runs up to announce that Noltus, the six lizardmen he took with him, and even his dog are returning. There's beer and pretzels all around, but it turns out that Noltus is actually a maurezhi, who are shapeshifting demons capable of eating people and their memories, which led him here. The PCs get a secret Sense Motive roll and Spot check to notice that there's something up with this group.

Eventually, the maurezhi, Onilati, gives the telepathic order to attack. The dog turns into a Jujalimus wearing a ring of freedom of movement, Onilati resumes his true form, and one of the lizardmen is actually a Skinwalker Sorcerer 9/Acolyte of the Skin 2, plus 5 stock Skinwalkers, for a CR 12+12+13+5 CR6s.

Let's talk about skinwalkers for a moment. They have an empathic link that removes their flat-footed state if any of their skinwalker friends within 60ft aren't flat-footed. Their weapons have Violet Fungus Venom on them, and they have Pounce. They're... okay for 8HD beatsticks. The Jujalimus is a shapeshifting aberration that can assume Small or smaller animal forms and have a DC 20 Fear aura, a Deafening Roar attack, and can stun people if it crits with its claw attacks. I hope they don't come during the daytime though, because it's got a +10 Fort save and has to make a DC 20 Fort save to avoid being paralyzed in sunlight. This is actually addressed; its Ring of Freedom of Movement lets it ignore this drawback.

The Skinwalker Sorcerer has ... pretty bad spells. Feeblemind, charm monster, lesser geas, dispel magic, fireball, scorching ray, invisibility... this looks like my first Sorcerer. Its DCs start at 21 at 5th level and go down. It does have 19HD and 200HP though, so it might live long enough to do some damage.

Finally, the maurezhi itself has at-will animate dead, blur, cause fear (DC 16), chill touch, death knell, hold person (DC 17) and invisibility, 3/day quickened death knell, fear. It can summon 1d4 ghouls at 100% or 2d6 dretches at 60% once per day. It eats corpses and consumes their memories. It can paralyze on a bite attack. It has Pounce. It has 142hp so it's less tough than the sorcerer. Hell, the sorcerer is the toughest thing here; even the giant Jujalimus only has 152hp.

This section has something that both annoys me and makes me smile; round-by-round breakdown of their tactics, which is nice for less-experienced MCs but the tactics, while not bad, are pretty goddamned simplistic to have been thought up by something with 19 Int.

The Jujalimus tries to flee at 20hp, and Onailati himself tries to teleport away if he goes under 30hp or all his minions are killed before him. The rest of the scenario assumes the PCs let Onailati get away. He still doesn't have Concentration. Did EVERYBODY at Paizo forget that SLAs still require Concentration checks in grapples? A +23 Grapple check isn't insurmountable; black tentacles is going in at +21 at this level. More likely they just didn't want to bother with the bullshit that is grapple... they still draw AoOs though.

Mantru is an old Olman village that has recently been depopulated for sacrifices to make shadow pearls. The zealous defense of the village by the tribal priest, Umlat, has attracted four couatls to protect the priest's body from profane rituals. They're currently guarding it in the village's lodge, keeping the ravages of decomposition away from it with gentle repose spells, waiting for two things: first, Quetzalcoatl has sent them a vision to alert them that heroes are coming to the village, and for someone to see his valiant sacrifice so they can take his corpse away to a sacred graveyard in the afterlife.

So upon arriving in Mantru the couatls come and greet them and explain that everyone in the village was either killed or dragged off to be sacrificed, but Umlat's corpse was left alone and they're there to venerate Umlat until someone worthy to bid him farewell answers their riddle.

I dislike riddles in tabletop. Usually they rely on knowledge that requires an intricate knowledge of either the campaign setting or of high school chemistry which misses about 40-50% of the player base (those too young, and those old enough to have forgotten high school). This one's not too bad, though:

I came back from the land of the lodestone's scorn,
I came back with the sun when the sky was new born,
I came back in the shadow as the day met its end,
What one place in four have I never been?

The answer is, of course, the north, with lots of red herrings and weird logic and the only true context clue being lodestone's scorn and having a working knowledge of magnetism and how compasses work.

Anyways, if the PCs answer the riddle, they get to see Umlat's corpse, from which rises his spirit and answers a few questions. Those being that in death he realizes his village was under the subtle influence of kopru, that the village was razed by savages wearing fiendish skins, the leader of the attackers was a wastrilith (DC 25 Know (the planes) check) who killed the tribal chief with a symbol of death (DC 25 Spellcraft). Umlat himself was killed by Onilati, described in enough detail for them to recognize him from their previous encounter.

Answering the riddle and letting the couatls bear his body and spirit to the afterlife is worth a CR 14 award.

Part two is EVERYTHING on Taboo Island, and I'll cover it in its own post because... there's a fucking lot of it with 50 distinct rooms. The good part is that it's the only other part of this scenario. The bad part is it's a long ass dungeon slog.

RelentlessImp wrote:EDIT 2: One addendum. "A sane MC will never let it happen" is not a valid argument when the rules allow it. You don't personally know every MC. I allow shit like this as an MC, for example, so your argument is fallacious just on the basis of me alone. But I'm looking at this from the perspective of the rules as-is.

He's just going to say if you let it happen, you're obviously insane and don't count.

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[/img]

As a side note, does anybody know what the sign with a circle around an N means? Seeing it and not knowing what it means is bugging me.

That's Paizo's arbitrary sign to denote the adventure's cartographer.

it depicts Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca (Olman god of the Moon) and Tonatiuh (Olman god of the Sun) working together on what appears to be a bow. Long story short, Noltus is hunting the bow, because if the mortal enemies Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca work together on it it must be important.

So, basically, a conquistador fundie wants the PCs' help to steal the natives' religious artifact. Fuck this guy. If the PCs are stealing artifacts from relatively peaceful humanoids, it's for themselves.

It eats corpses and consumes their memories.

Niiiiiice.

Starmaker wrote:

RelentlessImp wrote:"A sane MC will never let it happen" is not a valid argument when the rules allow it.

He's just going to say if you let it happen, you're obviously insane and don't count.

If you're ignoring the WBL table only because it has too many weasel words attached to it, and the result is post-scarcity D&D and you're defending that as the game people actually want and expect to play, then yes you're insane.

At the very least, you probably need to explain why +5 inherent to everything, maxed out gear and Anyspells for every encounter (at whatever arbitrary point the wish looping starts) is a) fun and b) the thing that everyone thinks you're talking about when you say D&D. Leaning on partially correct interpretations of a flawed rules document by itself isn't sufficient, especially when accepting the interpretations changes the game from "killing monsters in a dungeon for loot" to "Bullshit: The Wishening".

Okay, so, getting through Part Two is literally Hitler but I'll get to it sometime today. The problem is making it coherent.

Also, arguing against the way the rules are written is insane, and using your mind caulk to say it isn't and that people can't do that is equally insane. D&D just breaks at the level the adventure path is going on but it uses the same amount of mind caulk that makes it continue as if you were still stuck in the level 1-10 range.

Let me point out a few things that people here like to hate on, yet are supported by the rules:

Magic Item Shops. The city-building guides in the DMG specifically support them, and let you purchase up to the GP Limit of the city in question. Sasserine has a GP limit of 40,000, so any magic item within 40,000gp or less is fair game to purchase outright. Not to mention, by default, Savage Tide takes place in Greyhawk, whose Living Campaign supported robbing your dead friends and breaking the WBL coined the term Greyhawking, so WBL is broken on general principle.

Wish at an arbitrarily low level. You can purchase a Scroll of Shapechange for 3,825gp by the rules. Zodar have an (Su) Wish. So if you're not using Planar Binding, you're using Shapechange to change to a new Zodar every round, because this is supported by the rules. You can even buy the damn thing in Sasserine.

Campaign world changing to a post-scarcity society in which Tippyverse rules. This doesn't happen by the campaign settings as they're set out otherwise the level 20 Wizards who exist already would rule everything. Why this happens, I don't know, I don't have to explain it, the campaign doesn't bother to so why should I? But saying the PCs can't do it "because" is just being a heavy-handed MC and I would appreciate people not being assholes about it and turning this thread into a "You can't do that because X" when the rules quite clearly support it.

Yes, people have different interpretations of what D&D is and how the world works. I'm going by the rules as they're presented, so please, keep your personal ways of fixing it so that it either doesn't happen despite the rules saying you can do it or screaming about MCs being bad or insane out of it. Okay? Thanks.

I believe the main point is more that if you allow wish chaining, then you have true ultimate arcane powah and every challenge is meaningless. Just get a really large number of time stop scrolls and then drop as much delayed blast fireballs/summons/calling effects from other infinite scrolls as you need and auto-win any possible challenge.

And like you pointed out, you don't even need high levels to pull that off. Heck, you can do it from level 1 with pazuzu/pazuzu/pazuzu.

So basically wish chaining is never assumed to work because if it did, you wouldn't need any other strategy ever. It's not post-scarcity, it's "whoever did this first becomes the unquestionable unchallenged ruler of everything because they can take infinite actions with time stop chaining and take out all possible competition in the multiverse in 1 turn bitches".

Even if you apply the tome rules or something else to limit/fix wish chaining, you're not playing RAW anymore, you're now using a set of houserules.

You may as well ask why the campaign doesn't assume the party brings a psionic character that will use linked power and PP recharge tricks to take infinite actions every round as well.

Also hi, long time lurker here, really like reading OSSRs, finally registed!

Part Two: Taboo Temple
So I've delayed this enough. Let's get on with it.

We encounter the writer not understanding high-level D&D again because it mentions canoes to get across the lake to the island and swimming across and having an encounter with giant crocodiles, including a Titanic elite crocodile, a CR 15 encounter that attacks anyone swimming or boating across. The skinwalkers who charm this thing regularly don't understand the level they're at either because they expect this to dissuade adventurers from getting to the island.

The island itself is covered with Olman ruins of the tribe that once lived here, and there are four ziggurats among them. Wandering encounter chart is replaced by a 50% chance of encountering 2d4 skinwalkers or the Ruins chart, all of which is said to "reveal to the PCs that there is little to challenge them here".

Speaking of the island, here's a map of it:

Yes, that tiny white square is where most of this part of the scenario takes place. Here's the temple itself:

So, this assumes the PCs approach 1 by water, so let's get started.

1: This is the lair of a wastrilith who has cast alarm spells on the nets around the approach, which crossing the netting sets off unless the phrase "Khala rules now where man ruled once" is spoken. Assuming the PCs are flying across I guess it doesn't get triggered? Anyways the alarm can be heard as far as area 3. Wastriliths are eel-like demons, and this one, Xerkamat, is bound to the Aspect of Demogorgon, Khala the Two-Headed, inside of here who can see the world through its eyes and use it as a focus for the aspect's spell-like abilities.

Xerkamat is an Advanced elite wastrilith, a CR 15 encounter with 20HD with at-will blasphemy, control water, deeper darkness, desecrate, detect good, detect law, fear (DC 20), greater dispel magic, greater teleport, read magic, suggestion (DC 19), telekinesis (DC 21), tongues, unhallow, unholy blight (DC 20), and wall of ice, plus 3/day unholy aura. Blasphemy straight out is be killed, paralyzed, weakened and dazed as the PCs are 6 levels below his HD, so this is really a wake-up call for the PCs if they've been coasting along at this point and not keeping their gear and saves up to date. They may only be 5 levels below his HD, I'll have to do the experience math again. But then, freely available last breath and revivify can salvage dead PCs. Under 30hp Xerkamat teleports to the depths of the lake to recover.

2: There's a symbol of death here at DC 24 as cast by a 15th level sorcerer, and is overlooked by a collapsed statue of Quetzalcoatl and bas-relief figures of Tezcatlipoca and Tonatiuh, the latter of which a DC 30 Search check can find a hole in the eyes through which a skinwalker watches and alerts people if they've skipped the wastrilith and the alarm nets.

3: There's 15 skinwalkers here, including two acolytes and Chief Achcauhtli. The Chief doesn't join the battle immediately but he's only a Ranger 9 with an ape animal companion. The Acolytes are more dangerous; they're the same Sorcerer 9/Acolyte of Skin 4 that was dangerous in the encounter at the lizardman camp, and there's 2 of them, leaving 12 normal skinwalkers. This all adds up to an EL 17 encounter if everyone attacks at once, but really the only dangerous ones are the Acolytes, whose 200hp, decent saves and okay-ish spell selection means they can lay some serious hurt on unprepared PCs. Killing the chief triggers the other skinwalkers to try and run away at 20hp or less.

4: 4A and 4B are barracks, and are virtually identical except what you can find in them. 4A has a pouch full of 550gp of black obsidian and 500gp worth of amethysts.

5: This is the skinwalker acolytes' shrine, barracks and workshop, full of runes on the wall in Abyssal that are prayers to Demogorgon. For some reason the treasure in room 4B is detailed here, with 250gp worth of feathered cloaks, 1200gp in golden bowls, and 2000gp worth of chalices.

6: This is the viewing chamber that the guard skinwalker was watching through the statue eyes, but he joins the fray in Area 3.

7: The Chief of the Skinwalkers claims this as his quarters, and he sleeps on a bedding of tiger furs. The trunk int his room contains nine 1ft tall ivory statuettes of Olman spirits worth 70gp each, an olman priest bronze mask encrusted with lapis lazuli and malachite worth 1100gp, a ritual scepter with a moon-shaped sapphire worth 1450gp, two potions of cure moderate wounds, and a pipes of pain carved in the shape of a feathered snake.

8: This is an ancient Olman priest meditative chamber. There's a DC 30 Search check that finds a stone trapdoor that leads to area 33.

9: This is a breached wall that shows the signs of the Olmans trying to defend the place but was breached by skinwalkers.

10: The floor here is badly weakened, a DC 20 spot check can notice this. Walking on it causes it to collapse and dump people into area 31, taking 2d6 damage at Reflex 20 half. Again, this is crazytown D&D, even your fighters should have a permanent fly speed at this point.

11: This is a private olman altar, or was; now it's a shrine to Khala the Two-Headed, the aspect of Demogorgon. There's some treasure here, one of which - a statuette of Khala - is cursed, which deals 6 points of Wisdom damage til the Curse is removed.

12: A burial chamber; contains 8 wraiths and 2 dread wraiths. The trappings of the mummified dead here is worth 11,000gp and weighs 50 pounds, and taking any of it summons the wraiths to attack you.

13: This vault houses the bow that the missionary was looking for; if you haven't figured it out yet, the missionary was killed and eaten by the maurezehi we encountered at the lizardman camp, which is why he was able to imitate him. It's a puzzle room, and the puzzle is astronomy-based on the position of the three spheres (moon, star, sun). Solving the puzzle causes the gods to manifest; Quetzalcoatl as a spray of stars, Tonatiuh as a ray of sunlight, and Tezcatlipoca as a ray of moonlight, each around their statues. Worshipers is spelled incorrectly here. They explain that they're in danger of dying out because the Olmans are almost non-existant, and bless you to take the bow of Macutotnal, before their lights stream into the center of the room and condense into a bow. Getting the bow is worth a CR 14 award. There's a picture of it a few pages later:



The Nimbus Bow itself is a +2 shocking burst longbow that auto-adjusts to the wielder's Strength, allowing them to use their Strength for damage as a composite longbow would. Against reptilian monsters (including dragons) and creatures with the (earth) subtype, it functions as a +4 shocking burst longbow that deals an additional 1d6 damage to those creatures. In addition, it has standard action effects that only can be used outdoors; control wind 1/day, summon nature's ally V 1/day (Medium sized arrowhawk), and warp wood 3/day.

So, it's nice that someone at Paizo realized weapon-wielders needed an artifact past a certain point, but this thing is pretty miserly - it counts as a minor artifact all the same. It's useful as most of the creatures you encounter for the rest of the scenario are reptilian in nature, but beyond that, not so much - especially since its SLAs can only be used outdoors and you'll be inside and under the earth for a lot of it.

Personally, I'd make it a bit better by giving it SNA 1-9 with a cooldown of Minutes equivalent to spell level and making it a +4 period, but this is what they made.

14: This chamber is full of friezes depicting the processions of ancient Olman priests and a relief of what the city used to look like. There are hundreds of flat copper rings on the floor, each worth ... 1sp. OH COME ON. THIS IS LIKE GIVING TREASURE IN COPPER PIECES. There's 350 of them, each worth 1sp, for a grand total of... 35gp. What it says here is that the staircase leads to area 30, which is... you'll see.

15: This place is full of the stench of the creature in area 19.

16: Trapped corridor. When a Medium creature walks on the trapped area his weight triggers a fusillade of poisoned sears tipped with wyvern poison to launch from the walls. It's a CR 11 trap. It has 1d6 spears per target at +21 and 1d8+4.

17: This entrance has a stone door that's been disabled, but a DC 30 Disable Device fixes it... in which case the name of the skill becomes a misnomer. I don't think I've ever seen Disable Device become Enable Device. A DC 25 Survival check of the undergrowth to the north shows a trail that leads to Area 21.

18: This used to be a vestition chamber used to store religious vestments and as a dressing room for religious ceremonies.

19: This pit has a flesh jelly, a CR 14 Ooze that can inflict filth fever with 4 slams at +20 that deal 2d8+11. It has a Grapple of +36 so someone's getting Engulfed and subject to a DC 25 Fort save or die. It also exudes a horrid stench at DC 25 Fort or be nauseated for 2d6 rounds, which repeats itself if they're still in range at the end of being nauseated. Saving makes you immune to the stench for 24 hours.

20: This room is being used as a sacrificial room in which creatures with 14 cha or lower are sacrificed in a manner reminiscent of the Kali worshipers in Temple of Doom - ripping out their still-beating hearts and then beheading them. Those with 15 Cha or higher are taken through a secret door located at DC 15 Search check and given to the kopru.

21: The secret entrance that serves as the primary land entrance for the skinwalkers. It's built into a carved warrior slab located by a DC 20 Search check.

22: Contains a four foot tall pedestal fashioned in the shape of a miniature ziggurat. An inscription around the top reads "May the blood keep safe the flesh". It's a trap bypass lock that prevents the boulder trap in Area 23 from activating. Bypassing it requires someone take 1d6 damage and bleed long enough to take 1d6 Con damage. A DC 25 Search check of the northern wall determines that it's hollow, and beating it by 10 or more points shows that it can be lowered. A DC 30 DIsable Device can prevent it from lowering or cause it to lower; lowering it with Disable Device stops the trap from working, too. The passageway beyond leads to a boulder that wants to crush Indi- I mean, the PCs.

23: The aforementioned boulder trap. It deals 14d6 to anything it hits. Being Small or smaller entitles you to a DC 25 Reflex save to avoid being hit, while a Medium creature gets a DC 35, and a Large or larger creature gets no save.

24: This is a prison camp used by the skinwalkers, and contains 4 skinwalkers in the northernmost building and a Male tiefling rogue 12 who is here representing the Crimson Fleet. Searching the place after they're all dead finds a ledger that is written in Abyssal that contains an accounting of the number of victims who have been sacrificed since the Rogue's arrival, 160, 23 of which are marked as special sacrifices. Additionally it shows how many people have been "sent below for completion". Capturing the rogue and making him go from Unfriendly to Friendly has him tell the PCs about the Crimson Fleet's plans for the shadow pearls, which is detailed at the start of Serpents of Scuttlecove.

25: The top of this pyramid was once a temple to Tlaloc, and this is where Tlaloc's Tear was created. There's an eight foot diameter face caked with blood att the peak, and it covers a six foot wide shaft that bores down through the ziggurat's heart and into the earth below, which eventually leads to Holashner's Ziggurat. This is where the shaft in The Lightless Depths over Holashner's Ziggurat comes out. It weighs 15,000 pounds, "likly" too heavy for most PCs to lift. It has 360hp.

I'll cover the other 25 encounters in a second post, and it moves to a new map, too.

We start off with a new map:

Here you see my problem of coherence. There's no less than 4 ways into this place, and six ways out. Determining which way the PCs come in skews everything. Furthermore, the map is marked wrong, area 14 states that the staircase leads to area 30, when this shows it leads to area 26. Just... augh. Either they mean "ultimately leads to", but it just as well leads to area 27 and ultimately 28.

Can we get some real editors here? I thought Paizo was better about this shit than WotC given how people fellate them verbally. And from what I hear they more or less have succumbed to the same level of lackadaisical editing that WotC did. Sigh. Moving on.

26: This is just a landing that smells strongly of rotting fish coming from the west.

27: There are urns in this place that contain food and supplies for the oysters in 28 that can be identified as Abyssal in origin, as well as tools used to pry open oysters and collect pearls.

28: A giant oyster pond. Flooded to a depth of two feet, there are hundreds of freshwater oysters growing here. There are six larger oysters from which pearls are harvested regularly, grown enormous on foul substances harvested from the abyss. Prying them open requires a DC 26 Strength check; using tools from 27 grants a +6 circumstance to the check. Opening them up or trying to results in the oysters shrieking loud enough to alert the kopru in area 29 who immediately come to investigate.

Inside the pearls are partially formed black pearls the size of grapefruits, which are the raw materials used to create shadow pearls. Each one is worth 1,000gp.

29: This room is flooded to a depth of four feet, and contains an underwater entrance in the northwest part that leads to area 43. We also have our first encounter with the temple kopru; they're like regular kopru, but advanced, elite, and with the fiendish template, with 12HD. They still have the 1/day Dominate person and their improved grab now operates ona +32 grapple. They're CR 11 encounters, and there are three in here.

30: This chamber is flooded to a depth of eight feet, with its floor being four feet lower. DC 20 spot checks keep PCs from falling prone into the water. Once a place to worship Quetzalcoatl, it has now become the den of three hezrou, who hide underwater and attack. The secret door to the north leading to area 20 can be found with a DC 25 Search check.

31: The water here is only four feet deep, and is where the weakened floor above drops them. It's a dilapidated, ancient interrogation chamber.

32: Four foot deep water again, there are six cells closed by bronze gates and show signs of not having been used in ages.

33: You can get here from Area 8, and despite it being separated from later rooms by pathways it shows up here. Augh. There are four clay golems in the shape of leaders of Tanaclan. The numbering system in this section is clearly from some non-Euclidean mathematics.

34: Four foot deep water to the south of the platform, two foot deep to the north of it. There is pale fungus growing on the platform, and green slime in the sumberged area. Having at least 5 ranks in Knowledge (dungeoneering) lets you make a DC 20 Spot check to notice the green slime, despite the PCs encountering it with the troglodytes in Lightless Depths.

35: An old archive, the door needs a DC 30 Strength check to force open, and then a DC 15 Strength check to avoid being knocked prone and into green slime. The archive is in the form of stone tablets, and weighs 500 pounds, worth 2,000gp if taken to scholars. 500 pounds for 4 pounds of gold? Eh... not as good weight-reward ratio as the mummy trappings.

36: A five foot wide circular well around which a narrow ledge that is slippery is positioned. Moving along it requires a DC 12 Balance check. The well itself drops 65 ft, into a pool of boiling water, and leads to area 40B. Swimming it "requries" a DC 20 Swim check and immersion inflicts 10d6 Fire damage a round.

37: Four foot deep water and a Huge ochre jelly that can go through tiny ass tunnels to attack the PCs.

38: Four foot depe water again, and it has the signs of a trap that was disabled a long time ago; an oil sprayer and firestarter. The north door requires a DC 30 Strength check to open, and opening it releases all the water in 30, 31, 32 and this room to flow down the stairs. Anyone in 38 when this happens has to make a DC 15 Strength check to resist the current, or if you're a swimming creature, a DC 15 Swim check. Going down the stairs with the flow deals 2d6 damage and a DC 15 Reflex save upon reaching 40A to avoid being swept into a pool of mud.

39: These stairs lead to 40A.

And now we transition to ANOTHER map.

40: So, 40 overall is a volcanic grotto full of geysers and boiling mud that forces Fort saves vs DC 15 +1 per check every 10 minutes or take 1d4 nonlethal damage. It's Severe Heat.

Moving around the grotto inflicts a 20% chance of a mudpot bursting, geysers spraying, or vent of steam blasting one character, dealing 1d10 Fire with DC 15 Reflex for half. 40B leads back to 36. There are 3 more of those advanced elite koprus in here, one each in 40C, with a +10 circumstance on Hide due to them resting with just the top half of their heads above the mudline. They try to abduct the PCs into the boiling mud.

40D, the walkway's grown weak, and any small or larger creature causes people to fall into the boiling water for 10d6 fire damage per round they remain immersed.

One thing I want to point out is it says the kopru, with fire resistance 10, have enough fire resistance to avoid being boiled alive despite it dealing 10d6 damage. So either someone read the line about 1 point of fire resistance being enough to make you immune to immersion in lava and took that to a silly extreme which makes the dangers in here pretty pathetic to be beaten by a 2nd level spell, or they didn't really think this through. I'm willing to bet the latter.

41 is a tunnel adjacent to a submerged passage that allows kopru to go pretty much anywhere in the temple; all the black/blue bubbly stuff is the water and mud so they can pretty much go anywhere.

42 is like 41, but decorated. The sumberged passage here also leads to area 46.

43 is the main Kopru cave, and tells us there are 9 of the advanced elite fiendish kopru in the temple. 3 in 29, 3 in 40. The last three are in here. There's also a sizeable treasure here; 700pp in a ceramic vase that itself, encrusted with turquoises, is worth 3500gp, a collection of aquatic monster figurines worth 5000gp as a set, 13 large red coral platters shaped like clam shells worth 300gp each, a nacre box worth 200gp that contains 13 black pearls worth 500gp each, and 27 jaspers each worth 50gp. There's also a colelction of exotic fishing hooks made from ivory worth 250gp total, and a trident of fish command. There's also four potions of cure moderate wounds.

44 is an underwater passage that leads eventually to "one of several kopru fortresses scattered throughout the Isle of Dread's Underdark".

45 is creepy; all the skulls of victims sacrificed to Khala (the Cha 15+ given to kopru) are kept here.

46 has a pit with a passage that leads back to 42.

47 is the shrine offerings room, and is empty.

48 is an alchemical laboratory, which lets PCs with Craft (Alchemy) make a DC 25 check to understand the lab is dedicated to the creation of some kind of "mind-affecting explosive" - the one that unleashes the savage tide. With several days they could determine the exact properties of shadow pearls by studying the tools. There is the equivalent of a masterwork alchemist's lab spread across the two tables in the room.

49: A 40ft tall room that was once dedicated to Quetzalcoatl and is where Khala the Two-Headed, Aspect of Demogorgon, makes his home, along with six crocodile-like demons known as skulvyns.

Let's talk about Khala. He's a CR 16 encounter, a Large outsider with the Aquatic, chaotic, evil, native and tanar'ri subtypes. He has a Gaze attack, one for each head; anything within 30ft has to make two successful DC 27 Will saving throws each round at the beginning of their turn against a Fear gaze and a Confusion gaze. The Fear gaze causes them to become firghtened for 1d4 rounds. The Confusion gaze causes them to become Confused for 1d4 rounds.

Khala has 33 AC, Touch 16, Flat-footed 26, Dodge and Mobility. 20 HD, with 250hp, fast healing 5, DR 15/cold iron and goo. He's immune to charm, confusion, electricity, FLANKING, and poison. He has saves of +20/+19/+20, a 50ft speed and 50ft swim speed. He has 2 tentacles, 2 bites, and 1 tailslap at +25/+23/+23 at 1d6+16/1d10+10/2d6+10, with the tentacles dealing the same Rot as the Lemorian Golem but at a DC 28 Fort save or 1d4 Con damage. He can also constrict at 2d6+16 and has improved grab. He has at-will detect good, law, fly, greater dispel, greater teleport, telekinesis, and unholy blight, 3/day project image, and 1/day feeblemind. Once per day he can summon a retriever at 50% or 1d4 hezrous at 20%.

If this guy wasn't bad enough, his skulvyn pets are advanced elite skulvyn, with an aura of slow 30ft around them at DC 19 Will, but saving once makes you immune to that particular skulvyn's aura. They have a full attack routine of bite, 2 claws and 4 tail lashes at +17/+15/+17, and their tail lashes deal Wounding damage which continues to bleed at 1 point/round per attack.

Khala himself attempts to summon a retriever once the skulvyns are dead or he's reduced to 150 or fewer hit points. If Xerkamat is still alive, he uses his pact to benign transposition himself with Xerkamat if he's about to be struck a blow that would kill him or below 40hp. If Xerkamat's dead he teleports instead elsewhere and waits for his fast healing to cure him then teleports back to assault the PCs again, repeating til they or him are dead. Not sure how he gets an immediate action teleport without Xerkamat, but okay. Also, if Xerkamat has been killed, Khala is working on 6 negative levels that fade inside of 24 hours, so if the PCs rush this guy is less of a threat.

Killing Khala causes him to roar and explode into black smoke, in which Demogorgon appears briefly to glare at the PCs. With Khala's death, Demogorgon is finally aware of them moving against him. With Khala dead, Demogorgon's influence over the Isle of Dread is broken, and all supernatural non-Prime threats flee the island and leave it dangerous only because of dinosaurs and gargoyles. Also, killing Khala lets the PCs take the giant black pearl in this room, which is worth 20,000gp.

Finally, 50 is the room of the maurezhi encountered at the lizardman's camp, and contains the missionary's gear, some of it anyways; a suit of celestial armor, a rod of splendor, a periapt of Wisdom +4, a strand of prayer beads with a bead of healing and a bead of karma, and a bloodstained holy symbol of Pelor. The corpse-eating demon ate the rest of it.

Meanwhile, while the PCs were doing all of this, Lavinia has been kidnapped by demons and taken to Scuttlecove, and the Jade Ravens have taken the Blue Nixie to save her.

So... this adventure. This is really written in the style that Lightless Depths should have been. The numbering system used is not of this Earth, and can throw some MCs who haven't studied it completely to make a mistake and place rooms in the wrong place. If they had just taken a stance of numbering clockwise or counter-clockwise, it wouldn't be so confusing.

There are typos everywhere, a few of which I've pointed out, but overall this is one of the better put-together scenarios of the path. It's sort of boring, but the fight with Khala and the wastrilith Xerkamat shows a sort-of okay understanding of the sorts of threats that high level PCs need to be facing and have the potential to be exciting. I'll give this one an A-. It's not bad, it's not great, but it definitely deserves a look and a run.

I have mixed feelings about CoBI. It's an expansion of the original Taboo Island from X1: Isle of Dread, and I have some fond memories of that little dungeon. Turning a bunch of ordinary primitive tribesmen into fiendish creeps is a little odd, but it's perhaps the inevitable result of the power creep in D&D3e in general and the specific difficult of advancing the dungeon from 6th or 7th level is to 10th or 12th level.

I think Savage Tides, in general, would do well to get compressed and rearranged a little. Cutting some of the filler out of the first three adventures would let the PCs get shipwrecked at level 5 or 6, which makes the concept of HTBM more reasonable. Cut some more filler out of HTBM and ToD, and the PCs would around 9th level for the defense of Farshore. Reorder CoBI and LD so CoBI occurs first, and it's probably the last point at which pit traps and boiling water would be a threat to the PCs, while the aboleth horrors of LD probably work better for a higher level party.

It just seems like Paizo didn't really think hard about what resources the PCs would have at which levels, and tried to run some low level stuff longer than they should. Which seems to be a common problem with Paizo: in the Kingmaker AP, they have the 12th level PCs fight a war against minor threats but put 7th level PCs against a (severely weakened) lich cyclops. Having the war at 7th level would work better, which a lich cyclops works better against high level PCs.

Thanks for slogging through CoBI and LD. Though you still have Serpents of Shuttlecove left, and that's not exactly a picnic either.

To be fair, they did say you could freely run CoBI and ToD in either order - I even made mention of them doing so - but yeah, aside from Khala the Two Headed and Xerkamat, there's nothing level-appropriate here. The Acolytes have the potential to be dangerous but their spell selection is horrendous. Against what Paizo probably thinks a 13th level party looks like and the resources they have access to, the Acolytes are potentially a TPK on their own, to say nothing of the Lemorian Golem, Khala the Two Headed, and Xerkamat. There are inklings of thought into what parties of those levels should face, and the Lemorian Golem, Khala and Xerkamat are expressions of that, but everything else is so... schizophrenic, easily mowed down, or just outright stupid like the bar-lguras and their "spooky" tactics.

What would have been better is, instead of 14 different writers, if they'd given it to one person who showed an understanding of the different power tiers and let them write it from beginning to end. If Logue had done it I think we would have had an overall better adventure path, or if Tito Leati did - Xerkamat and Khala are some of my favorite encounters so far. The Nimbus Bow is kind of bullshit for an artifact, though.

Scenario 8: Serpents of Shuttlecove
by Richard Pett

If you've been paying attention, you'll notice something weird about this; this was supposed to be Keith Baker's scenario, yet is attributed to Richard Pett. This is the only information I can find on why this is, with James Jacobs providing the Backdrop contained in the same Dungeon. To spoil the next one, no, it's not actually Sean K. "I hate high-concept characters being mechanically sound" Reynolds who wrote it; that one is attributed to Robert J. Schwalb, and I can find no information on why this is.

I was seriously looking forward to ripping Sean K. "I learned my design lessons from White Wolf" Reynolds a new one in the next scenario, too. I legitimately forgot about the writers having changed, though. Let's get this over with.

Our adventure hooks are to rescue an already-established ally of the PCs and to come to Scuttlecove to topple the Crimson Fleet for other reasons. These are both retreads of the major plot hooks through Serpents of Scuttlecove.

Part One: A Brother's Revenge
Just gonna go ahead and spoil it since the title does it for me; Vanthus' corpse should have been burned to ash, the ashes buried, the ground soaked in holy water, preferably passed through the liver of a priest, and the water followed up by generous salting. That's right, Demogorgon brought Vanthus back to life as a fucking Death Knight, who then promptly kidnaps his sister. This guy's obsession with his sister borders on Commodus levels. Hell, this is some Caligula-level shit, coming back from the grave and his first thought is getting his sister? Fuck.

Anyways, the PCs, upon returning to Farshore, get to see that the Vanderboren Manor has been damaged by a fire, the northern facing's roof burned completely away. Within a few minutes of arriving the residents of Farshore bombard the PCs with details of the attack, and it can't be any secret who did this because one of them overheard the following dialogue:

"It is time for you to love me again, sister. The Lord of the Crimson Fleet can awaken it in you when I bring you before him. Your time here is over."

...Moving on. Farshore's residents are legitimately terrified, because Vanthus came with a group of bar-lguras and led an outright assault against the Vanderboren manor, and the bar-lguras bore the brand of the Crimson Fleet, who almost took Farshore. A lot of people are barricading themselves in their homes and some are thinking of abandoning Farshore entirely, an action that Jackass Manthalay Meravanchi is sponsoring. Attempting to calm the populace is a DC 30 Diplomacy check, opposed by Meravanchi's +10 if he gets involved in arguing.

Investigating the Vanderboren Manor, we find Lavinia's gear; +1 leather armor, +1 rapier, ring of protection +1, gloves of dexterity +2, and a cloak of resistance +2. I think this is the first person in the adventure path who wears a cloak/vest of resistance, thus proving Lavinia as the only intelligent NPC once again.

Anyways, the Jade Ravens are basically fucked; following the attack they took the Blue Nixie and set sail for Scuttlecove so as to "show up those other heroes". The sidebar regarding the Jade Ravens acknowledges the PCs, following Scenario 3, probably most definitely do not want to do another sea voyage and so teleport there, getting there far ahead of the Jade Ravens. The Jade Ravens are sailing into a trap, though, and meet grisly fates detailed later on, and so the last few installments of the adventure path assume they're dead, Jim.

Divination magic is acknowledged here again as to finding out where Lavinia was taken, and it points out that the answers to divination spells should guide them towards Part Two; it even goes into a little more detail about using divinations to guide PCs towards later objectives. Good job, Richard Pett.

Discern Location is mentioned by name, as is Scrying. Discern Location will point them to the island Sekorvia in the Pirate Isles, on which Scuttlecove is. By the time they get there, though, Discern Location will have stopped being useful to locate Lavinia, as they go somewhere Demogorgon himself is blocking those sorts of spells.

Scrying fails outright. The Crimson Fleet stronghold is under a permanent Mordenkainen's private sanctum, which is "Fuck your scry & die". On reaching Scuttlecove, Lavinia and Vanthus are then in the Gaping Maw, they get a +5 Will save to resist due to being on another plane, but it will show them if they fail - which Lavinia probably will, because you can deliberately fail a save. It'll show a rag-draped and badly beaten Lavinia dangling over a pit of lava while Vanthus is brooding in an iron-walled room surrounded by demonic shadows.

So, I like that this sort of thing is thought of and put into print; I've said this before, but I do appreciate it when they include information for less-savvy or less-experienced MCs. Two points for Pett here.

As to getting to Scuttlecove, it's 1200 miles northeast of Farshore, a 16 day journey by sea. But this is for a 15th level party, they have eighth level spells, and probably don't mind burning a 7th level slot for a greater teleport. And other spells are mentioned... but then it goes into suggesting you railroad the PCs into taking the Sea Wyvern by reminding them that they can take cargo and shit, that they'll be going into unfriendly territory without a safe place to sleep, that the ship's basically a portable stronghold, and by outright telling them Meravanchi will steal the ship if they leave it there. Also that Lavinia's abduction, while tragic, doesn't need to be immediately resolved.

Pett, you just fucking lost all the points here. No safe place to sleep? Fuck you. Rope trick is a 2nd level spell that, barring transdimensional spell, is an impenetrable fortress that lasts for fifteen fucking hours at this point. Carry extra gear? Fuck you again, they have extradimensional storage space because the previous scenarios proved to them that the people who wrote them are assholes who assign arbitrarily large amounts of silver and fucking copper coins and goddamned copper rings worth 1sp each for them to carry. Meravanchi stealing the ship? They have scrying. They'll hunt him down and fucking kill him, they're level fucking 15 and he's a pathetic nobleman whose levels are all in aristocrat. They can stuff him into a portable hole and close it and take it with them and suffer basically no consequences. They can straight up kill him and blame it on the dinosaurs inhabiting the Isle of Dread and, having saved their asses, no resident of Farshore will gainsay them.

Just fuck you. The ship fetish in this fucking adventure path is bullshit and had no reason for all this space telling them that they absolutely must take the ship with them.

At one point during the preparations to leave, Captain Harliss Javell - remember her, from the Bullywug Gambit? - after having almost an entire page dedicated to what happened to her after she met the PCs last time, has a half-fiend nymph named Tyrlandi use a scroll of dream to help her send a message to the PCs. The message is basically that she went to Scuttlecove "for realize vengeance" and tells them of Vanthus' arrival in Scuttlecove, detailing the undead monster he's become, and offers an alliance with the PCs; she will, with the aid of rebels known as the Protectorate, help them rescue Lavinia and offers them a safehouse in a place called Red Foam Whaling, and safe docking in some secluded harbors on nearby islands. Unfortunately, she gets captured by the time they reach Scuttlecove.

Jesus christ, Pett even ruined one of the best characters so far by turning her into a pirate damsel in distress. Just take that CR 14, now 15, badass pirate lady and turn her into another goddamned helpless woman. Fuck you, Pett.

To cement the horrible of this choice, Harliss Javell gets an art DOWNGRADE.

Be honest; if it weren't for the identifying name, sharktooth necklace and the marilith earrings would you even guess this is meant to be the same fucking woman?

Anyways, approaching Scuttlecove is full of details like hidden coves and how to approach disguised as Crimson Fleet mercenaries - flying a crimson flag. Not leaving a guard on the ship, if you dock at the Scuttlecove docks, inflicts a 10% chance per hour that the Sea Wyvern gets stolen by 1d6+6 Scuttlecove thugs.

God I don't even want to finish this now after the bullshit this pulls in the first FOUR PAGES. How did I get past this to run it? Additionally, to cement it as a bad scenario, it contains six parts. I need a little bit to recover from the rage-sepsis just the first four pages inflicted on me that no mere words can dispel.

My copy of the AP puts this as Scenario 8, not 7, and Serpents of Shuttlecove, not Into the Maw. (Fixed, thanks!)

SoS continues the trend of being insanely wordy and not very good. The sad thing is that it's still one of the better APs and I don't really think anything Paizo has done since is better.

mlangsdorf wrote:My copy of the AP puts this as Scenario 8, not 7, and Serpents of Shuttlecove, not Into the Maw.

SoS continues the trend of being insanely wordy and not very good. The sad thing is that it's still one of the better APs and I don't really think anything AP has done since is better.

I just titled it wrong. It's still 8, Serpents of Shuttlecove. I wasn't kidding about the infusion of rage of the first four pages, it made me make that mistake.

When I finish this I think I'll do Age of Worms, I remember that being praised as pretty good. But a friend of mine has promised to run it and I don't wanna spoil it for myself... maybe I'll take a look at Kingmaker instead.

Kingmaker is just a giant pile of filler with background text only the DM will ever see that supposably connects it all. Yes, that is an accurate description of almost every Paizo adventure path ever.

To be fair, that's pretty much every published module ever, not just Paizo. World's Largest Dungeon? Extensive Celestial/Fiend backstory that the PCs never interact with. Red Hand of Doom? It only comes into play when the PCs face the avatar of Takhisis. Bastion of Broken Souls? You start off being attacked by a demon for (REASONS) and eventually square off against Demogorgon.

Hell, look at anything here and it's the same story - lots of background information the PCs never interact with. What really matters is how well it gets the point across and informs the MC how it plays into the story and helps them to portray the NPCs involved. Savage Tide, so far, aside from Bullywug Gambit, has done NONE of this in a manner that isn't as hamfisted and space-consuming as possible - and even Bullywug Gambit veered towards that problem.

Okay, it's time to stop frothing at the mouth at all the horrible shit this scenario has reversed, killed the player's sense of accomplishment, and outright ruined. It wants to pretend Vanthus is still anything approaching a threat despite being a pretty pathetic individual in both encounters with him, fine. Fine.

Part Two: City of Chaos
So, the lead in here is actually nicely written for once; sure, the bulk of the information it wants to impart points you to the Scuttlecove Backdrop section, but I want to point you to the only time I've seen this adventure path use brevity to impart its most important detail:

War. No one mentions the word, but everyone who lives in Scuttlecove knows. The city is locked in civil war.

I want you to look at this if you ever want to write your own adventure path. This? This right here? THIS IS HOW YOU FUCKING IMPART INFORMATION TO THE MC. It's a thing of beauty. That it comes from Richard Pett is surprising after the slog that is Sea Wyvern's Wake, though to be fair there were a few things in SWW I liked so maybe it's not that surprising. Further, it points out that most of what follows is basically ad-hoc, that these are high level PCs who can basically say 'Fuck you' to railroading and skip right to the good parts, but details the bare bones of what the scenario requires in order to continue.

We get some details that the PCs will encounter random encounters of thugs, bar-lgura press gangs, monks of Dire Hunger and other things that come from what is, ostensibly, a high-level city full of Evil schmucks that is the port of call for the Crimson Fleet. Apparently, Intimidate and Disguise checks can avoid the random encounters. What I want to know is, what if the PCs come traipsing through the city with a fucking Balor in their wake? Do the asshole bully-boys roaming the streets tangle with people who have gated in 40HD outsiders?

It addresses this! Outright warfare brings on an EL 22 encounter as all the factions come to defend the city, consisting of no less than nine faction leaders, six stone golems, four barbed devils, waves of Dire Hunger Monks, Crimson Fleet recruiters, and yuan-ti assassins and slavers. I know a few people playing the zealous righteous sort of Clerics would love to just blast this city into the gutters, where it belongs, and this sort of information is very helpful to the MCs who know similar players. Of course, it doesn't take into account that the PCs can basically destroy the city with planar binding, but hey, you can't have everything.

Let's talk about Scuttlecove for a bit, though. Scuttlecove is pretty much identical to Sasserine by the city-building guidelines, only it's a Nonstandard (anarchy) government. Same 40,000gp limit, I think identical assets (32.9 million), and a similar spread of races but with a 5% yuan-ti presence.

Scuttlecove itself first appeared in Dungeon #95 in 2002 as the scene of the module "The Porphyry House Horror", written by James Jacobs. It's a module designed for 10th level PCs, and was written solely because of the existence of the Book of Vile Darkness. And like the Book of Venereal Disease, the treatment it gave the Evil antagonists was the puppy-raping, kitten-drowning, in-your-face Evil while assuming they were handling the subject with anything resembling subtlety. And yet again the focus of it was Demogorgon's influence.

Scuttlecove's history is interesting; it was founded by three ur-priests known as the Holy Triad, who were also cannibals. The Monks of the Dire Hunger were created to serve them, and gradually Scuttlecove came to be a haven for lawless brigands and pirates under a single law: Don't worship any gods. The civil war mentioned is because the Holy Triad were deposed, leaving a power vacuum.

Your basic Scuttlecove Thug is a Fighter 4/Rogue 4, and yet again I weep for the lack of information given on leveling to levels like that without adventuring. The fluff for it is lacking and it makes encountering non-adventurer NPCs with 8 PC class levels sort of jarring. Once the PCs start trying to find out where Lavinia is, they start drawing the attention of scrying spells, divinations, and 1d4+2 of those aforementioned thugs.

Now, moving on from the highlights, we have fappery to the Sea Wyvern as being anything other than baggage to 15th level PCs to deal with again. It again highlights that the Sea Wyvern, docked in a hidden cove, is the "only safe place" to rest while in Scuttlecove. If they docked in the harbor they get to deal with bar-lgura press gangs and thugs. Sleeping in an abandoned building or a flophouse, 3 times per night at a 15% chance there's 1d6+6 thugs, 2d4 recruiters, 1d6+4 monks, or monstrous predators such as vampires, rakshasas, evil outsiders, night hags or dopplegangers interrupt their rest.

Did... nobody at Paizo know of the existence of rope trick? Okay, it's not infallible, but unless someone is watching when they set up their rope trick, there's no way of attacking them - and even then, they'd have to set up an ambush in the general area of the rope trick. Not even mentioning that they can bypass all of this with a second level spell is silly, and while mentioning that all these words mean nothing if the PCs have it would be silly too, it's egregious because they keep pretending that ambushes while resting are still something the PCs give a fuck about at level motherfucking fifteen, much less level nine when using it regularly becomes a thing.

Asking around about Lavinia starts drawing the attention of the Crimson Fleet and Seventh Coil, who start to investigate who's asking questions. At one point the PCs encounter two poorly misguided yuan-ti who think they can take out a level 15 party. The yuan-ti themselves are halfblood rogue 2/assassin 7s, which are supposedly a CR 11 encounter. A second yuan-ti ambush consists of 4 of them, and 6 Crimson Recruiters, who are bar-lgura bloodhound 3s, for a CR 16 encounter.

There is also an exploration section, but there's no real map of Scuttlecove outside of the aforementioned Porphyry House Horror. I'll include it here for completeness' sake.

No, I don't know where the Savage Tide encounters take place, but I'll list 'em anyways.

The Waterfront itself is a horrible hive of scum and villainy (I guess Scuttlecove counts as a hab-block) and details that the fishermen have been pulling out some pretty ugly ass fish called sackfish; bloated bags of vaguely luminescent flesh and having double heads. If handled incorrectly, they burst and splash yellow mold on everyone. A DC 30 Knowledge (the planes) check will reveal that they're fiendish creatures common on the 88th layer of the Abyss, the Gaping Maw.

The Plaza of Hanging Ruin, if you've got the Jade Ravens still alive, showcases Kaskus Kiel, the dwarf druid, hanging, rotting from the plaza's hooks. It details that resurrecting him will let him give you information about the Jade Ravens coming here when Kaskus and Zan Oldavin (the rogue) got jumped by yuan-ti assassins. Kaskus was killed while Zan was taken to the Minting House to be "recruited". Furthermore, the Jade Ravens are ECL 9 at this point.

Porphyry House: Oh god. So, Porphyry House is a brothel, headed by a half-fiend nymph named Tyralandi.

Incidentally, Tyralanadi is the same half-fiend nymph that used the dream scroll so Harliss Javell could contact the PCs. The brothel itself can serve as a way to find out where Harliss is, after a DC 40 Diplomacy check (or a bribe of 5,000gp worth of jewelry or 10,000gp worth of magic) and another DC 40 Diplomacy check or DC 40 Perform check to entertain her to engage Tyralandi's aid against the Crimson Fleet. All she wants in payment for information about Harliss' whereabouts is a lock of hair from the PC with the highest Charisma, which she will use to make a simulacrum of that character for her own amusement. Then she'll tell the PCs that Harliss was taken to the Birdcage, a harpy-run establishment.

The Rusty Shunt is a Protectorate safehouse that the PCs can gain access to via a DC 40 Gather Information check and a DC 30 Diplomacy check to assuage the worries of Lars Landicaster that they aren't there to kill the Protectorate. Underneath, the safehouse houses the remaining members of the Protectorate after they were slaughtered mercilessly by the Seventh Coil at Red Foam Whaling, and includes Tolin Kientai (the asshole ranger/fighter) of the Jade Ravens cowering here.

This scenario is just ugly, guys, and my interest is waning because of it. I'll try to finish off the last four parts in one post.

I have a fresh dose of rage inspired by trying to get involved with playing again, even if it has to be PbP, and running headlong into an MC that has no idea what the hell he wants yet wants to throw the blame for that onto his would-be players. So I'm going to do the mature thing - take it out on people who deserve it, like the writers of Savage Tide.

Part Three: Red Foam Whaling
So this is probably where the PCs go first, after receiving Harliss Javell's dream message. We get nearly half a page of backstory that the PCs don't interact with, then a quick blurb about the Protectorate using this place as a safehouse being killed, Harliss being abducted, and someone who knows the PCs are coming using the place.

Red Foam Whaling is an encounter location that is pretty small, compared to the dungeons we've had so far.

The entire place serves as an ambush for the PCs, so the numbers are really just to differentiate the areas that the PCs fight in. A1 is the front door, and both sets of doors are stuck, requiring a DC 20 Strength check to get through.

A2 is a meeting room with a round table and four chairs.

A3 is the lair of the head honcho of the ambush, known as The Leech.

A4 is a storage room full of costumes, bullhorns, wire, and other supplies used to maintain the illusion that Red Foam Whaling is haunted, which a PC can find out with a DC 25 Bluff check.

A5 and A6 are barracks, each with six hammocks.

A7 is detailed in The Ambush (coming up).

A8 is an unstable room, and if more than one Medium creature enters, the floor collapses.

The Ambush itself is pretty pathetic; it consists of three yuan-ti assassins who are watching in the form of tiny vipers from the roof of the buildings - one above A6, one above A1 and one above A3. If the PCs are noticed approaching, then the one above A3 alerts The Leech, and they move into position while the Leech summons up a succubus named Alersia, who assumes Harliss' form and pretends to be unconscious.

The Leech himself is a yuan-ti abomination Blackguard 3/thrall of Demogorgon 6 with an attack routine of +26/+21/+16/+11 with a masterwork scimitar at 1d8+8 and a bite at +20 at 2d6+4 plus a DC 20 poison. He's got a potion of fly, so he's only slightly useless, and is apparently CR 16.

He's accompanied by 3 yuan-ti assassins (yuan-ti halfblood rogue 2/assassin 7s, CR 11) and a stock Succubus.

The succubus lays in wait for the PCs and when they approach her to investigate "Harliss", she leaps up, grapples the nearest PC, and uses her energy drain kiss on him. The assassins attempt death attacks on any PCs near them. The Leech is busy casting corrupt weapon and eagle's splendor, none of which are silent so the ambush probably fails as an ambush on general principle as he starts casting them while the succubus "fools" the PCs (the Leech is just west of A8, under the stairs, while "Harliss" is in A7).

Anyways, the fight's not very interesting and the setup is unlikely to work because of the Leech non-silent casting eagle's splendor and corrupt weapon. The only interesting thing is the Leech has the Dual Actions (Su) which lets him take two full rounds worth of actions in one round, but he doesn't have anything interesting to use them on.

Under 40hp he tries to retreat under deeper darkness and turning into a tiny viper to run to A3, his lair.

This setup is just asinine. Do I really need to point out why? Any moderately-intelligent party is going to not be fooled by the succubus pretending to be Harliss because they'll have some means of True Seeing. The Death Attacks at DC22 are binary - either the PCs can die to them or they can't, and 3 of the assassins are not a challenge if they can't. So you either lose 1-3 PCs immediately or they wasted their time studying for death attacks and last breath/revivify still exist.

So anyways, the PCs can find Harliss' earrings and necklace in the Leech's lair, along with a folded note that is an introduction to Tyralandi from someone named Zimon Alenveer (the cursive is a bit fucked it's either Zimon, Simon, or Timon).

Additionally, Zan (the Jade Raven half-elf rogue) is in the Butchery at A7, and the ambush happens there instead if the Jade Ravens are still a thing.

Part Four: The Birdcage

No, not that, that was actually amusing.

So the Birdcage, also known as The Crooked Spire, which I may start referring to if I can't avoid making jokes about Nathan Lane in drag, is a stone townhouse topped with a spire built of cheap timber that is leaning to one side.

The inside is decorated with garish paint and "alarmingly instructional erotic imagery". Technically, this is a brothel that competes with Porphyry House, and is run by a group of harpies known as the Sisters of Lamentation. Well, they say it's a brothel; in reality the Sisters of Lamentation run a torture-for-profit business here. Yes, for the low price of 100gp per day you too can have them torture secrets out of someone.

Do you see what I mean about Paizo's handling of "evil"? So far we've got a brothel run by a succubus (Oooh, evil!) and a torture house run by harpies. Next they'll be saying drag is evil!

So anyways, Harliss is here being tortured, and the harpies have already extracted the fact that she's a member of the Protectorate and has contacted "allies" (the PCs) to aid her against the Crimson Fleet. Additionally, Liamae, the now useless Sorcerer 4/Favored Soul 4/Mystic Theurge 1, is here in captivity so the harpies can get information out of her regarding Lavinia and Vanthus, and is under a lesser geas to never escape, so her spirit is broken.

...You know, I really, really fucking want to kick the ass of Richard Pett. So far, we've had one woman kidnapped by her almost-incestuous, reanimated brother, one strong pirate woman beaten and kidnapped and tortured, and one friendly NPC female beaten, tortured, and turned into what might be a slave.

Our three "strong" females in this adventure path have been abused completely off-screen. Just... fuck.

Anyways, here's the Birdcage:

B1 is the "recieving"[sic] room,and is open all hours of the day and night with a locked southern door, staffed by a charmed NE warrior 1 who doesn't stop people from bashing down the southern door.

B2 has an encounter in it, 1d3 Sisters of Lamentation. So, let's talk about them for a moment. The Sisters of Lamentation are harpies that shave and tattoo their bodies, and don't seem to like clothing at all. Here's a picture of one:

The Sisters are all Harpy Bard 7/Dirgesinger 5s with daggers of venom, bardic music/dirgesong 12/day consisting of countersong, fascinate, inspire competence, inspire courage +1, song of awakening, song of bolstering, song of grief, song of horror, song of sorrow, suggestion and captivating song, with spells of lesser gease, major image, detect thoughts, enthrall, invisibility, suggestion, charm person, cure light wounds, grease, silent image, dancing lights, ghost sound, mending, message, prestidigitation and resistance, with DCs at 19 and going down.

These make CR 13 encounters somehow. They have a fly speed but are in an enclosed area. They actually have Concentration but it's at +12. There's a total of 3 here regardless of how many are actually in B2 when the fighting starts, and the other two get drawn in.

There's some weird-ass naming in here, like Pett was a big fan of Planescape: Torment but didn't quite get the naming schema. Case in point, B3 and B4 are known as The Kept Beyond Gratitude, which is where they let their slaves sleep and keep their contracts out in the open, the searching of which lets them find an agreement with the Seventh Coil for interrogation of a "feisty and foul-mouthed wench".

B5 are the waiting parlors where guests get to wait to be visited by the Sisters of Lamentation.

B6 are all interrogation rooms. Most of them look like your classic torture chamber but two look like noble bedrooms, "where the horrific harpies use other, more sinister methods to torture prisoners".

...You know. I could go on a tangent of pop-culture psychology and accuse Richard Pett of being a woman-hating cis-lord, but I won't, mainly because this isn't Tumblr and I'm not a brainless moron.

B7 is "The Cage of Ecstatic and Infinitely Joyful Lamentation" and is a giant birdcage, with a smaller birdcage near the top. The big cage has Harliss in it, while the small cage has an Advanced Evolved Slaymate. Slaymates are fun little creatures that help you build a necromancer's army, but this one is just waiting for the PCs to enter the cage so it can drop on them like a drop-bear. It's a CR 8 encounter that ... well, it's a fucking slaymate, it's not meant to be a guardian.

So anyways, the PCs get to rescue Harliss at this point, who wants nothing more than to get out of the Birdcage and won't talk til there's some distance. My PCs went a step further and burned the damn place to the ground, which Harliss appreciated. Harliss will never speak of the torment the harpies put her through, she's scarred for life.

So Harliss' information basically boils down to: there's a Seventh Coil safehouse at the Minting House that the yuan-ti operate out of. The Crimson Fleet and Seventh Coil have an alliance. And that ends Harliss' relevance to the adventure, and suggests you use Harliss as a DMPC. A foul-mouthed, pirate wench as a DMPC.

Part Five: The Minting House

So this exists primarily so the PCs learn where the Crimson FLeet hideout is. It has one encounter, 5 Seventh Coil Slavers, at CR 11, yet has its own map for some fucked reason. I'd say this is about as pointless as the Birdcage getting its own map... and I'd probably be right.

Here's the map for completeness' sake:

The Seventh Coil Slavers are pureblood sorcerer 10s with dominate person, charm monster, enervation, fly, haste, lightning bolt, bull's strength, false life (already cast), mirror image, scorching ray, animate rope, charm person, identify, mage armor (already cast), shield, acid splash, arcane mark, detect magic, mage hand, mending, prestidigitation, ray of frost, read magic and resistance as spells known, DCs starting at 21 and going down. They're accompanied by 8 Rogue 4/Fighter 4s and are basically uninteresting. Seriously, Part Five takes up all of half a page, not counting the map. On beating down the yuan-ti and their friends, they get to progress to Part Six, which I'll cover in its own post.

...Fuck this scenario. It's full of bad encounters, bad advice, bad treatment of sex and bad treatment of women. The writing here is pretty fucking terrible, and I don't mean its composition, I mean its content.

Allow me to emphasize that we've gone from three females who could handle themselves (Harliss, Lavinia, Liamae) to three females who need rescuing in the course of the first four pages, a brothel run by a fiend, a brothel full of harpies, non-vanilla sexual practices being "alarming", and seduction as a means of information gathering being "sinister". I direct you to Richard Pett's wiki page to compare how people view him as to what his writing actually fucking contains. And I assume the Nicolas Logue jibe is true because Logue can actually fucking write decent characters while this asshole renders them down to damsels in distress. FUCK THIS GUY.