Questions about PF adventure paths, and fitting them to 3.5

[Kol Korran]

hello playgrounders. A long Self made campaign will end soon, and i'd like to present my players with options for a future campaign. though i have a few self-made ideas, my future schedule, and the intensity of campaign preparation might not mix well, so i'm looking for alternatives.

i highly dislike most 3.5 modules (with a few notable exceptions.), but i read small parts of PF campaign logs based on their published adventure paths, and it seemed quite interesting, quite well built.

so i though maybe to run a PF adventure path, but most of my players probably won't have the time to read and find the differences, so we'll probably play it in 3.5. (if any of my log readers can help, and compare to the campaign and play style they read about so far that would be awesome!) my questions are as follows:
1) if you played or DMed any of the adventure paths, how was the experience? anything specifically good/ bad?a fun experience?

2) the main advantage i'm seeking is reducing prep time- so DMs, how well built are the adventures? the campaign?

3) are the different adventures in the paths well connected, or are they "stand alone" with loose connections? i am looking for a campaign feel.

4) i understand most of these take place in the world of Golarion. is it a fairly "typical" D&D setting? (i heard someone compare it to Forgotten realms, only with less high power characters, and less godly involvement). will it be hard to adapt it to a fairly "regular" setting?

5) how about adapting it to Eberron?

6) Most Important: if anyone can give me a short explanation of a theme of an adventure path he recomend, mostly the gaming experience and what should a DM and players expect of the specific AP that would be great!

7) how hard will it be to adapt things back to 3.5? new spells? new classes? monsters? items? rules? i have a passing familiarity with the system, from 2-3 PF PbP games i joined once, that didn't last long.

8) any other general advice and recommendations are welcome.

thanks in Advance,
Kol.

(search word: Tomer)

[BlueInc]

1) if you played or DMed any of the adventure paths, how was the experience? anything specifically good/ bad?a fun experience?

I've highly enjoyed all the adventure paths I've DMed, and I'm itching to run all of the adventure paths I've read.


2) the main advantage i'm seeking is reducing prep time- so DMs, how well built are the adventures? the campaign?

I find them very well built; you can run them straight out of the box 90% of the time, but I try to spice up every encounter with my own flavor.


3) are the different adventures in the paths well connected, or are they "stand alone" with loose connections? i am looking for a campaign feel.

They're usually strung together well like beads on a string; each part is unique, but they follow a logical order. Every once in a while you'll have an odd connection between sets, but usually the leads they drop will keep your players intrigued.


4) i understand most of these take place in the world of Golarion. is it a fairly "typical" D&D setting? (i heard someone compare it to Forgotten realms, only with less high power characters, and less godly involvement). will it be hard to adapt it to a fairly "regular" setting?

I enjoy Golarion, but the adventure paths are very heavily set in the world. A creative DM shouldn't have too much trouble adapting ("Ok, this is the small port city, this is the major metropolis, this is the uncharted wilderness..."), but at every step of the way, it will reference people, places, and concepts somewhat unique to Pathfinder.


5) how about adapting it to Eberron?

Sorry, never played it D:


6) Most Important: if anyone can give me a short explanation of a theme of an adventure path he recomend, mostly the gaming experience and what should a DM and players expect of the specific AP that would be great!

Carrion Crown is a horror-themed adventure path that takes the players from the funeral of a friend, through most of the popular horror tropes (with interesting twists), and finishes with saving the land by stopping an evil from being unleashed on the world. The module is heavy on roleplaying, with combat being something that happens on the way to advancing the plot. The module is particularly good about rewarding players for good thinking instead of smacking everything they see.

For example (spoiler alert): The very first encounter involves an angry mob disrupting the funeral; the players can beat up the thugs or reason with them for even amounts of experience. Reasoning with the thugs will earn respect with the townsfolk, while killing any of them might put the PCs in prison for the night.


7) how hard will it be to adapt things back to 3.5? new spells? new classes? monsters? items? rules? i have a passing familiarity with the system, from 2-3 PF PbP games i joined once, that didn't last long.

Mostly translatable; the NPCs and monsters might be a little tougher than standard. Whether or not this is a problem depends on optimization levels of your group. The Combat Maneuver rules will probably give you the most headaches for creatures that like to grapple, trip, etc.


8) any other general advice and recommendations are welcome.

Check out the Rise of the Runelords adventure path; it's the first adventure path, so it's a little rough in some areas, but my players are having a blast with it and it was written for 3.5. I'm actually running it in Pathfinder right now so we're in opposite boots. :smallsigh:

[Dusk Eclipse]

There are some pretty good adventure paths by Paizo that were written with 3.5 in mind Age of Worms, Savage Tide and both of them are quite good.

Age of Worms has a good focus on Necromany and it generally is about the re-emergence of an ancient necromancer who wants to drown the world in the titular Age of Worms. I actually played a part of it in with my past DM set in Eberron, it had a lot of focus on Khyber and the Cult of the Blood of Vol (or maybe the cult of the Dragon Below I can't remember exactly) and use the 13th moon as key plot point.

Savage tide on the other hand has a bit more focus on planar travel and the abyss (with a lot of involvement of the Demons Lord) so it might be not be ideal in Eberron.

Hope that helps:smallsmile:

[Kol Korran]

@ Dusk Eccplipse:

hhmmm... so Savage Tide and Age of worms? might do... they are spread overmany Dungeon magazines, i'll need to see if i can find there. never subscribed to the WoTC site. or are these on Paizo's Dungeon magazine? a bit confused... :smallwink:

a plane invasion can work in Eberron- one of Shavarathh's lord decide to shift his attention to the mortal realm, perhaps with some bigger plans in mind, don't know.

also, not to be a down puller, but i liked your previous avatar better. what IS this?

BlueInc:thanks for the detailed response!

i've read a bit about Rise ofthe Runelords, but actually the other paths i saw looked more intriguing. Runelords feels sort of generic, while the rest are more... atmospheric. the horror one for example.

thanks for the head up on combat maneuver. have looked it over. might be nice to import it to our game!

anyone else has good experiences? :smallconfused:

[Dusk Eclipse]

I think they released both Age of Worms and Savage Tide in a compilation, it might be worthwhile to check Paizo site or my drivetrough RPG.com to see if they have the PDF's or something like that.

And my Avatar is Parallax the physical embodiment of Fear in the DC universe (particularly in the Green Lantern part of the universe), it is just for Eldritch Abomination Theme week, I'll return to my Kobold gish avatar next week (or perhaps my Zabuza Avatar)

[Grommen]

The first 4 adventure paths are written for 3.5, so they would require no fixing. "Rise of the Rune Lords", "A Second Darkness", "Curse of the Crimsion Throne", and "Legacy of Fire". I'm pretty sure that after that they use the Pathfinder Rules.

If you knew the pathfinder rules somewhat you could translate it backwards without much problem. Despite the reputation, I've found the two systems very compatible.

Golarion is a pretty generic world at it's core, but the places, names, and faces are uneek only on to them. Their goal was to make a world both familiar and their own. So it has all the classic elements of a good world, High Magic, Medieval Kingdoms, every culture you can think of from our own world and high fantasy, big freeken magic, and a whoppen back story. Most everything you can think of got tossed in the mix. It is a bit more advanced than the realms, they have the printing press, bigger ships, and at least one kingdom has working black powder weapons. Golarion is a high fantasy world. It's just twisted around a bit.

That can be a problem of coarse. For example in "A Second Darkness" the party has to stop Drow from smashing a planetoid into the world plunging it into a second world ending event. The elves are ashamed that their are Drow, and the fact that Drow even exist is a closely kept secret. That would be quite hard to translate to say the Forgotten Realms, where the words out, and well hell their is at least one Doo Gooder Drow who is quite well known. In fact on Gloran that particular type of Drow can not exist. As any drow who has compassion for anything would be killed, and have their mellon dissected for signs of what went wrong with them. :smallbiggrin:

I have not read enough of the Curse of the Crimson Throne to know if it's truly stuck in their world, but it's a city based campaign so I would think you can just borrow another frontier city on any world and call it good.

The Legacy of Fire would work in Calmashe.

On a personal note: Seeing as Wizards has destroyed the Realms with their 4th ed BS, Golarion has become my home world. I quite like it, because of the above mentioned reasons. It's both Familiar and generic enough for me to weave my stories around it and keep the feel. It also feels like a quite smaller world. So a trip from Say the Dales to Waterdeep is not an epic 3 month long journey in game. It's worth picking up a copy of the old world book, or the new world book that is written for their game system. It's generic enough that you can find a place in it to plop your stories around. I've recently grafted the old Classic "Temple of Elemental Evil" into Taldor and Andorea, borrowing their gods and demons. Was not very hard to do.

[herrhauptmann]

The monsters/people with PF prestige classes would need their saves altered a little.
In PF, your saves for a PrC start a little differently, but they still progress at the same rate.
Good/Bad
1/0
1/1
2/1
2/1
3/2
3/2
4/2
4/3
5/3
5/3
While in 3.5 of course, they go
2/0
3/0
3/1
4/1
4/1
5/2
5/2
6/2
6/3
7/3
But that's a relatively small change. And it really won't change too much to ignore it altogether.

[Kol Korran]

The first 4 adventure paths are written for 3.5, so they would require no fixing. "Rise of the Rune Lords", "A Second Darkness", "Curse of the Crimsion Throne", and "Legacy of Fire". I'm pretty sure that after that they use the Pathfinder Rules.

Golarion is a pretty generic world at it's core, but the places, names, and faces are uneek only on to them. Their goal was to make a world both familiar and their own. So it has all the classic elements of a good world, High Magic, Medieval Kingdoms, every culture you can think of from our own world and high fantasy, big freeken magic, and a whoppen back story. Most everything you can think of got tossed in the mix. It is a bit more advanced than the realms, they have the printing press, bigger ships, and at least one kingdom has working black powder weapons. Golarion is a high fantasy world. It's just twisted around a bit.

< FR interesting ideas >
On a personal note: Seeing as Wizards has destroyed the Realms with their 4th ed BS, Golarion has become my home world. I quite like it, because of the above mentioned reasons. It's both Familiar and generic enough for me to weave my stories around it and keep the feel. It also feels like a quite smaller world. So a trip from Say the Dales to Waterdeep is not an epic 3 month long journey in game. It's worth picking up a copy of the old world book, or the new world book that is written for their game system. It's generic enough that you can find a place in it to plop your stories around. I've recently grafted the old Classic "Temple of Elemental Evil" into Taldor and Andorea, borrowing their gods and demons. Was not very hard to do.

first of all thanks for the advice! however, i am not intending to play in the FR. it just doesn't sit well with me (no offense meant :smallwink:) my preferred setting is Eberron. but from your description it seems most will be hard to fit there... ok, maybe i'll read on Golarion a bit.

thanks for the detailed response!

[LansXero]

Actually most adventure paths tend to be very generic. With the knowledge you have of Eberron Im pretty sure you can identify a series of places that follow the same traits needed for each of the adventures. Also you could try some Pathfinder Society Scenarios and change the sponsor from the explorer's league to a dragonmarked house or something. That and Pathfinder allows for firearms and a little less of a medieval world, which I think suits Eberron nicely.

[Kol Korran]

Actually most adventure paths tend to be very generic. With the knowledge you have of Eberron Im pretty sure you can identify a series of places that follow the same traits needed for each of the adventures. Also you could try some Pathfinder Society Scenarios and change the sponsor from the explorer's league to a dragonmarked house or something. That and Pathfinder allows for firearms and a little less of a medieval world, which I think suits Eberron nicely.

hmmmm... that is quite comforting! getting used to another world requires... getting used to :smalltongue:

also. just wanted to say thanks for the various advice and ideas and mostly the support you give on my various campaign and gaming related threads. thanks a bunch! :smallsmile: