What is the most well written premade adventure path?

[unseenmage]

Am planning on writing some of my homebrewed adventures up in the style of "real" adventures and was curious what premade adventures I should read as preparation?

I'm also curious what adventure the Playground thinks is the most balanced and/or the most fun too?

Specifically asking about 3.0/3.5 adventure modules if that helps.

[Zanos]

Red Hand of Doom and Age of Worms tend to get a lot of love.

[unseenmage]

Red Hand of Doom and Age of Worms tend to get a lot of love.

For the quality of the writing or the balance of the encounters?

[Dugong]

The three most highly praised adventure paths for 3.5 (I can't comment about 3.0) are typically The Red Hand of doom (which I've run) running from levels 4-11, The shackled city (which I'm playing in) and Age of Worms which are both lvl 1-20.


The Shackled city and age of worms can both be found in various dungeon magazienes and the shackled city can be bought as a compendium book (presumably with more detail). The adventure is predominantly dungeon based and is written with the intent of seperate adventures with an overarching plot. In my opinion it's a fairly solid adventure and one of few that make it to lvl 20. Age of worms is similar but I have no experience with it.


The red hand of doom is a stand alone book running from about level 4-11, it has a very strong following and there's even a thread on the playground dedicated to it. The thread is for DM's and gives advice on adjusting monsters for more OP groups, PF and fixing some plot holes. Yes there are some plot holes, the two best examples are (note spoilers):

A lich that's supposed to have 'TPK' written all over him, yet the party can one shot him since they have his phylactery and a staff with several heal charges.

Or since they're supposed to return the phylactery, they can Leeroy Jenkins the dungeon and throw it at his face. This option is especially good since you're not killing the lichs minions, making him less likely to attack you.



However, fixes for these and other minor problems are suggested on the thread (which if you haven't read, do so as it's VERY good).


The strengths of the campaign are that it's not all dungeon crawls, the campaign features good set pieces with interesting dynamics and nice variation in locations. The party has good freedom for RP and overall would have my vote for best adventure path.