[3.5] War of the Burning Sky

[Thurbane]

So, I've recently downloaded a few of the free/sample payer's guides etc. for this campaign. I've had a read through and I'm intrigued.

Just wondering who has experience with this campaign - it seems like an interesting premise for a setting.

All feedback appreciated.

Cheers - T

[Faily]

Of all the published adventures and campaigns I've played, WotBS is perhaps my favorite.

Pros:
- It has an interesting setting, and the setting feels alive even without the PCs.
- Rich character gallery. So many memorable NPCs.
- I really liked the plotline. It absolutely gave me the feeling of playing a true hero.
- It leaves enough wiggle-room for the PCs to do things their way without being ham-fisted too hard onto the plot-rails.

Cons:
- It's long. Like... really, long.
- The big character gallery can also be a con, depending on your group. Our group delegated the task of writing up each NPC and adding notes to who they were in our "big book of NPCs" to keep track of them all.
- Plot was sometimes predictable, but far less than other published adventures. There were some times when our group would correctly predict things, but it could also be that we are rather quick on the up-take and genre-savvy.

[Thurbane]

Sounds good.

I'm going to look into options for buying a 3.5 copy, if it's still available. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/images/sand/icons/icon_thumbsup.png http://www.giantitp.com/forums/images/sand/icons/icon_thumbsup.png http://www.giantitp.com/forums/images/sand/icons/icon_thumbsup.png

[StreamOfTheSky]

I've been running a WotBS game for over 2 years now, we're a bit over halfway through it (combats go slowly and we only get in 3-4 hours a week...normal groups would have finished it by now).

I highly recommend it. The pros/cons listed are pretty accurate. I will say, it's pretty railroaded for much of the adventure, and if the party significantly goes off the rails, you'll have to heavily modify things, possibly toss out most of the storyline. I think most long adventure paths are like that, though. And I personally *like* a good railroad -- as player or DM -- so it's a pro to me. My players claim to prefer sandbox, but their favorite chapters have been the most railroady ones and least favorite the looser chapters, so...

Are you a fan of the Suikoden series, by any chance? The selling point to me for deciding to run the campaign was how much it reminded me of a Suikoden plot. Especially Chapter 4.

[Ualaa]

Our group had a lot of fun with this one. I used the compilation book (softcover) for 3.5, that had all of the adventures within a single volume.

I like that at several points in the adventure, you could run one chapter/adventure and then another, in whatever order the players chose to engage them in. There were three possible final fights, depending on the order of the final three adventures.

As the previous poster says, the world feels detailed and there is a lot of attention to detail. For example, in a world of magic and mystical creatures, it makes sense for the rank and file of a well trained and equipped army to have a silver weapon and an iron weapon, to overcome some common types of damage reduction.

[dysprosium]

This is easily one of the best adventure paths out there. I have had the chance to run this campaign twice. The second time was much more successful (as we got to complete it).

The setting itself is the backdrop for my current IRL campaigns. It is a rich setting with lots of information about the different regions and important sites. Plenty of room for expansion and lots of ways to make the setting your own.

To echo the previous posters, there is a lot of NPCs. In the beginning chapters, there are lots of opportunities to pick up tag along NPCs. I don't know how you or your group may feel about that. It has been an overall positive experience for my groups.

If you are lucky enough to get the one book compilation, I understand that there are additional side quests and story arcs that were not available in the individual chapters. I had bought the series as individual chapters years ago so I would love to know what these extras would have been.

There are twelve chapters in all, each chapter a full length adventure in and of itself that usually focuses on a particular site or region. I want to say that some of the chapters even discuss what happens if your group goes too far off of the rails. Lots of flavor with new feats, spells, prestige classes.

There also is/was plenty of support for this campaign on the enworld site. It was published by them. I want to say one of the moderators/owners(?) of the site was the editor and wrote at least one of the chapters.

So yes, get this adventure path if you have the ability to.

[Denomar]

Of all the published adventures I've played through, this was the one that felt most like it was written with the power gamers on forums in mind. A lot of the enemies want to hate on casters (not necessarily a bad thing) but, mathematically if you are not an intelligence based caster and you are fighting an inquisitor its likely that you won't be casting any spells. Which can lead to frustration for some players.

No real complaints otherwise, just something to keep in mind.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I want to say one of the moderators/owners(?) of the site was the editor and wrote at least one of the chapters.

Yeah, his username on ENWorld is "PirateCat" iirc.


Of all the published adventures I've played through, this was the one that felt most like it was written with the power gamers on forums in mind. A lot of the enemies want to hate on casters (not necessarily a bad thing) but, mathematically if you are not an intelligence based caster and you are fighting an inquisitor its likely that you won't be casting any spells. Which can lead to frustration for some players.

No real complaints otherwise, just something to keep in mind.

Your experience is the polar opposite of mine... NPC enemies w/ class levels are always too weak and need significant buffing in my campaign, and in order to make the Inquisitors and Ragesians in general actually good at their supposed job of anti-caster, I had to make Church Inquisitor an evil PrC exclusive to their ranks and completely re-invent the Forsaker PrC for competent anti-caster foot soldiers. Even with the buffs, the Inquisitors tend to get torn through like tissue paper (despite vastly improving their AC, which as printed is often in the low teens even at mid levels!) and casters dominate.
Any NPCs that are martial/caster hybrid, like...a certain group in Chapter 5...are especially weak as written.

I run a lower power level than what seems popular here, too... I ban or harshly nerf a lot of caster goodies like Persistent Spell, night sticks, the entire celerity spell line, abrupt jaunt, dark chaos shuffle, etc... And any 10-level caster PrC that doesn't require losing a CL to meet entry requirements, has no CL loss as written, and is a clear improvement over the base caster classes who'd enter it, I impose a lack of CL advancement at level 1. They are a big group now... 5 PCs plus Torrent rebuilt as a Ruby Knight Vindicator as an NPC they control. But for a long time it was just 3 PCs and Torrent, and it was no different back then (I use more enemies to make up for their present size).

[Fizban]

I took a look at the free intro material, and it sounds like the main thing inquisitors do is have a couple low-cost dispel magic like effects. A turn undead replacement that can only ever dispel one effect at a time (but still has a ton of ammo at 3+cha rather than Complete Mage's similar variant which only gets 1+cha), and a 2nd level spell that does counterspells only (with a dispel check). They combine these with a fairly standard reactive counterspell feat that burns their next turn, but they still have to roll dispel checks. Most importantly, in order to counter that there's a player ACF that one ups it with the most generous "avoid being countered" feat I've ever seen (though that's sor/wiz only). So even if you're worried you can just take the counter-gimmick. There's also an alchemical item that does a cl 0 targeted dispel or SR 10 for 1 minute for only 50gp, which I feel is more kicking the low level casters when they're already weak and a non-issue by the time you have enough buffs to worry about it, but I could be wrong.

Here's something I'm curious about: how many inquisitors and other classed NPCs of mid-high levels does the game throw around? I'd be interested to see if they can actually fit it all within the demographics. Do they have literal armies of 5th level characters like some people seem to think is standard, or or is the terrifying inquisition mostly just a few hundred 1st level clerics with a dispel ACF?