Giantslayer - Shadow of the Storm Tyrant

Throughout the Giantslayer Adventure Path, the player characters have taken on the servants of Volstus, the Storm Tyrant and the forces they’ve been building in the Storm Tyrant’s name. In Shadow of the Storm Tyrant by Tito Leati, the PCs finally make their way to the Storm Tyrant’s cloud castle and take the battle directly to him.

I’ve had mixed opinions of the instalments of Giantslayer so far—some have been good, others not so good—but Shadow of the Storm Tyrant works well as the culminating adventure. It’s primarily a dungeon crawl, but has a good sense of urgency and variety that its predecessor, Anvil of Fire, is missing. It also has some epic-feeling encounters and combats appropriate for a high-level party, and it makes good use of its setting, which helps to turn what could have been just a bog-standard dungeon crawl into something much more unique.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Cohorts and Companions

While conflict with villains and monsters is a significant part of any roleplaying game, the game would be considerably less interesting if the PCs didn’t have friends and allies as well. Whether they’re a local inn-keeper providing the PCs a room to sleep in or a loyal cohort who accompanies the PCs on their adventures, these friendly characters help fill out the rest of the world and provide variety beyond evil and/or monstrous opponents. Pathfinder Player Companion: Cohorts and Companions focuses on the followers and allies who aid the PCs in various ways throughout their adventuring careers.

As the book’s name implies, cohorts (gained from the Leadership feat) are a significant focus, but the book also goes considerably beyond these. The “Companions” part of the title can refer to animal companions, but also to pretty much any other person, animal, monster, or even object that in some way accompanies or aids the PCs—and there is quite an impressive breadth of options covered.

The book opens with a two-page discussion about why NPCs might follow PCs, and how PCs might go about gaining followers. This includes things like hiring NPCs as well as NPCs just following along for their own reasons. Naturally, there’s a fair amount of discussion about the Leadership feat, as well as mention of the variant Leadership feats that can be found in other products: Squire from Knights of the Inner Sea, Torchbearer from Dungeoneer’s Handbook, and Vile Leadership from Champions of Corruption. There is also a very good sidebar on “Who Controls Cohorts?” which discusses how to decide whether the GM or player (or a combination of both) gets to control cohorts’ actions.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest

Just under two weeks ago, the Pathfinder Playtest launched. This is an open playtest for the 2nd Edition of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. It includes the Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook, the Pathfinder Playtest Bestiary, and Doomsday Dawn, an adventure made up of several sections, each focusing on a specific aspect of the game for playtesting. You can download free PDFs of all of these, plus other materials like character sheets from the Pathfinder Playtest website.

This is not a review. It doesn’t really seem appropriate to write a review of a work-in-progress. However, it does contain some of my thoughts about the game (which I suppose is review-like). Since I concentrate fairly heavy on Pathfinder products on Of Dice and Pen, I figured my readers may be just a little curious about my thoughts and why I won’t be talking much about 2nd Edition Pathfinder for the foreseeable future.

When 2nd Edition was announced, I was cautiously excited. I believe the game is due a new edition. I have commented in many of my reviews that it has grown to a size where it’s impossible to keep track of things. There are so many choices that the vast majority are never used. The game is also convoluted with overlapping, redundant options or even sometimes contradictory options. Pathfinder has been out for nearly ten years now (and will have been by the time 2nd Edition launches fully next year) and a lot of material has been published for it, so it’s not surprising that it’s become somewhat bloated. However, I also think Pathfinder is still a very playable game. It just needs a bit of consolidation and a few alterations and fixes here and there.

After the announcement of 2nd Edition, Paizo began releasing regular previews of the game on the Paizo Blog, and I followed along, eager to see what the game would be like. At first, I liked a lot of what I was seeing (the action economy system, for example, based on the one from Pathfinder Unchained, which I already use in my games). Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the changes were far more extensive than what I was looking for. This wasn’t so much a revision of the game as it was a complete rebuilding of it—more like the change from D&D 3.5 to 4th Edition D&D instead of 3.5 to Pathfinder, which is more along the lines of what I want. I have a lot of Pathfinder products that I haven’t had a chance to use yet—adventure paths I’d like to run, for example—and converting them to the new edition would be just too large a task that I don’t have the time for.

And while there are things in the new game that I like, there are also several things that just don’t appeal to me. “Resonance” is one such thing. This is a new mechanic for limiting magic item use and replaces things like magic item slots. Basically, every character has a number of Resonance Points and using or “investing” (for worn items) a magic item requires spending Resonance Points. If you run out of Resonance Points, it becomes more difficult to use a magic item and you need to make checks. The idea is that the character needs to use a little bit of their own innate magical talent to activate a magical item. My problem with Resonance is not on the mechanical side. For me, it changes the entire feel of the game. Pathfinder and D&D before it have always had some items that can be picked up by anyone and used. There is nothing necessarily wrong with a game or setting that requires expending innate ability to drink a potion, but that’s not Pathfinder to me. I changes the dynamic and that doesn’t appeal to me.

I will not be using the Playtest rules with any of my games. All my current games will keep with 1st Edition rules for the remainder of their campaigns. I will absolutely take a look at the final rules for 2nd Edition when they release next year, and depending on how they develop, I might consider using them for future campaigns. However, I suspect I will be remaining with 1st Edition. As I said, I’ve got lots of books waiting to be used—more than enough to last me for many years worth of gaming. There are also a whole pile of books left that I haven’t yet reviewed here, so I’ve got lots to keep me busy on here for quite some time too.

Please note that, while I don’t intend to switch to 2nd Edition at this time, I have nothing against Paizo for producing it or anyone who plans to make the change. As I said, I think the game is due a change. It just so happens that change has gone in a different direction to what I personally would have preferred.

Giantslayer - Anvil of Fire

Every adventure path has a low point. It’s pretty much unavoidable. There’s always going to be something that doesn’t work quite as well as everything. Of course, the hope is that any low points are still high—still good and fun, just not quite as high as the other points in the adventure path. If this situation is met, you have a winning adventure path. Unfortunately, Giantslayer isn’t an example of this. Even more unfortunately, its low point sinks especially low.

After Ice Tomb of the Giant Queen, I worried that the adventure path was becoming repetitive. Three instalments in a row all follow a very similar style where the PCs need to infiltrate much larger and potentially overpowering forces in order to achieve their goals. I worried that this repetition could start to bore the players. Anvil of Fire by Sean K Reynolds, the fifth part of the adventure path, is only superficially similar in this regard and mostly breaks from the pattern established in the last three parts. Unfortunately, it’s repetitive in an even worse way: with itself.

Anvil of Fire is one long dungeon crawl with battle after battle after battle—with almost every encounter being virtually identical to the one immediately before it. There is very little opportunity for pause (except if and when PCs decide to retreat from the dungeon to recover) and even less opportunity for interaction with NPCs in any way other than combat. There is so much of the same in this adventure, I can’t imagine any group of players not being completely bored by the end. Even the most avid “hack’n’slash” players will likely be dismayed at the lack of variety in the combats.

SPOILERS FOLLOW