Has anyone run/played 'Rise of the Drow' (AAW) ?

[Ualaa]

I've started the adventure, Rise of the Drow.

Our group is in the prologue section, 'The Darkness Arrives'.
We've done some of the frontier city section, but the group likes to really go crazy on resources so was low health and out of resources, without going into the crypt below and without defeating the baddies in the bell tower.

They organized a water brigade, with the snow outside and the villagers they had saved, to put out the fire.
With the plan of running away, if the fire mephits were still there.

Since they would have died, if they fought more of the mephits, I decided their orders were to create the distraction and they did, so they moved on.
The party got the fire put out, rested up, and then were given the information that there were people missing.

They chose to chase after the missing people, rather than go into the crypt.

The adventure figured they'd deal with four smaller encounters before running out of resources.



Has anyone run this, or played through this?
What worked well and what did not?

Did you change anything for your group?



My players are:
Darius, an Elf Symbiat (Spheres of Power).
Trump, a Human Incanter (Spheres of Power).
Spartan, a Dwarf Warder (Path of War).
Angus, a Dwarf Elementalist (Spheres of Power).
Aeturnus, a Half-Orc Warlord (Spheres of Power).

We're playing with the Pathfinder rules, plus Spheres of Power, Path of War, Ultimate Psionics, and 1,001 Spells.
Basically Spheres and the default Vancian magic exists side by side, alternate magic systems.

Two more players are thinking of playing.
One used to be a regular, changed jobs and could not play our game day, has recently asked to switch days around... so should be regular. He was leaning towards a Rogue-Barbarian build.
The other guy never shows up if the first is not there, and is sporadic even when the first guy is there... he wants to try the new 'magic system', for a character who is a Teleport-Charge Barbarian.

We've got five players already, possibly seven at times.
That's quite a few.
That said, the adventure assumes they would have the resources/health for several more encounters, which they did not.

[Manyasone]

What happened exactly, if I may ask? I'm planning to run this AP eventually and to avoid any problems, you know

[Ualaa]

The PCs arrive in a frontier town, that is sort of empty. They encounter villagers, who are heading towards a religious event of some sort. The villagers invite the players to attend and the players are made to feel welcome.

The High Priest has a magical item, which is used once a year to make the area safe. There are interruptions to the ceremony, which the PCs deal with each time. There are nasty things outside, and another adventuring party stumbles in, wounded and not in good shape. Their friend outside has turned to stone, and my players went outside to deal with it and had to fight off an unknown creature. The priest, without success, attempts to restart the ritual each time. The only healer of my group spent 90% of his healing ability on the NPC adventuring group, healing their wounds and curing their poison (spheres of power allows you to cure, based on the talents you take from the Life sphere and does not use the Vancian concept of spell slots and levels, so he had the ability to cure poison/disease at level 1).

Eventually a pair of glowing light things comes through a portal, which his item opens; from the reactions of the villagers, this is not typical for the ceremony. The creatures attack and the priest falls unconscious or dead. This was a rather hard fight, because of damage reduction which the party did not have a means to bypass. They managed to get some of the other group to help, and one of those members (the Paladin) was able to overcome the DR, which made the fight a lot easier.

In the panic of that event, the magic item (minor artifact) falls through cracks in the floor. Also several of the villagers run outside in a panic. There are zombies outside that are attacking the villagers. Our group went out and dealt with them.

When they came back in, they can smell smoke coming from the bell tower above the cathedral. The stairs basically wind around the outer edge of the tower upwards, and the group gets attacked by fire mephit creatures who are flying in the middle, but close enough to attack the group who are on the stairs. So there is no flank opportunities, and the creatures attack with claw/claw and have fire damage to make their attacks a little worse. The healer, with 12ac and 7hp withdraws to the bottom of the stairs, saying he cannot handle the proximity fire damage, and to come down for heals. He's got two left at this point.

The fire mephits are dealt with, but there's more noise further up and smoke still coming from above (another encounter further up the tower, that my group didn't want to deal with). They decide the church can burn down, they're not risking their necks. As they head out, some acolytes come up from a ladder that is hidden beneath the podium/altar that the High Priest has been conducting the ceremony from. The acolytes say that without the magic item, the town is basically lost, as the ritual keeps them safe for the year. The High Priest has gone down in search of the 'moonshard', and they became separated from him. They give some potions to the party, and beseech the party to enter the crypts and find the priest.

The party uses the potions to mostly heal up, close the trap door to the crypts and place enough things on it, that no one is getting up from below. They decide to organize a fire brigade to have the villagers put the cathedral fire out, with the plan to withdraw/abandon the villagers if there are more nasties upstairs since they are literally out of heals. The PCs have not met their true nemesis yet; there are hints of what that is in the crypts which they did not go into. The fire was designed to distract the PCs, so the true bad guys (Drow) will have an easier time escaping. Since they're not going to have another encounter, and are prepared to flee and have the villagers die in their places... I rule that the mephits further above had only been ordered to create the distraction and not have the cathedral burn entirely.

The party plans on spending an entire day within the cathedral, doing nothing but prepare for adventuring the following day. They want to use the NPC party, to tag along as cohorts but don't want them to if experience will be split even partially. I let them know, their characters do not understand experience points but do know that on their own they do everything themselves and with others present some of that burden is upon others. They decide to hedge their bets, by having the Paladin help them out, while having the rest of the NPC party look after the villagers.

Rather than rest an entire day, some of the villagers let the party know there are missing/kidnapped villagers. They request the group get their friends and family rescued. The party was supposed to witness the kidnappers in the distance, from the crypts... after dealing with some undead, and some drow disguised to look like undead. They're supposed to be on a three day chase at this point, but chose to take the night off. A group of drow, they're supposed to be chasing has some break off as a delaying group.

I decide the trail is fairly easy to follow, since no one has Survival/Track ability to any great degree, through the melting snow. The party comes across a group of darker skinned elves (the ones who were going to break off and delay them), this isn't that hard of an encounter but it is getting late.

The drow have a magical item/ritual which is going to cause an Eclipse, as the sun rises, which will help their escape. I've basically pushed the drow back half a day, so the party is sort of on schedule. They're missed out on four or five encounters within the crypts below the cathedral. The delaying party has been dealt with, but the eclipse hasn't happened yet.

I'll do that, as the opening for next week.

[willoftheway]

I'm usually a GM, but am actually finally playing in a game. We've just finished the prologue for rise of the drow and are heading into the main book now. That being said these comments are of course from a player's perspective.

When we all sat down and discussed what game we'd like to play in we all agreed we wanted something rougher, more difficult. We'd recently finished a 2 year stint playing rise of the runelords with mythic rules tacked on and we were all more interested in a more brutal game. We got what asked for and more.

The prologue is not just difficult as a player, it is punishing. The brutality of the encounters you face - many of them 2 or 3 times the party's ecl - encourage significant optimization. However optimizing can lead to situations where your perception checks are too good and will get you punished for "jumping ahead". Over the course of the 6 level prologue we lost about 20 or so characters, including two full wipes and many many more near deaths.

That being said finishing the prologue was the single most satisfying piece of an adventure path I've ever been part of. It will test your players and test them hard, but if they are down for that kind of experience it will be awesome.

A couple notes - after our two full wipes which came relatively early our GM instituted a sort of save point rule. He has never nerfed or buffed a single encounter. Our group actually runs with the same available sources as you minus the 1001 spells but with a couple other third party things tacked on.

[Ualaa]

No one has yet used the Book of 1,001 Spells.
But it has been an available resource for almost two years.

The same went for Path of War.
The book was sitting in the pile of books at the table (and thus available for use) for almost a year before anyone decided to make a character from it.
The one player who did, is now on the Warlord, which will be his last (having done one of each of the others), then he says he will be doing archetypes of other classes for his cycle.

Most of the rest of the group are experimenting with options from Spheres of Power, at the moment.
Spheres could mix things up a little, in that the adventure might assume that you cannot cure a poison until you're high enough for Neutralize Poison, but a level one character could grab that talent from the Life Sphere.
I don't necessarily see that as being too much of a difficulty.



The death count is interesting...
The first session included a lot more encounters than the party was ready for; the adventure seemed to anticipate the group would go further before stopping.
I like that the party is chasing something, and if they don't push themselves then that objective will be lost.

Our group probably figured 'Rise of the Drow' would be an easier path than our last.

We just finished (did not actually complete... but one player was obviously not enjoying himself, with another who wanted to finish it but not play through something that hard again... and the other three were enjoying the challenge) our Rappan Athuk run.
We had 76 deaths, over the course of 72 sessions of play; many were avoidable, but many not so much.

The death count ranged from 6 and 8 for our more cautious players to 27 for the most reckless.

[willoftheway]

I've been looking at and considering running rappan athuk as a GM myself for quite awhile. If the group didn't enjoy rappan, I don't imagine them enjoying the prologue very much.

Our group has been utilizing spheres of power pretty heavily since we added it to our playlist, path of war however has been almost a one man love affair, myself. You're right that the spheres healing offsets certain status effects by a lot but I find that's pretty well counterbalanced that in general a sphere casting individual will not have the sheer breadth of options a traditional vancian caster will and so will find situations where they are less than effective. They are not generally one man toolkits.



Edit: Couple things I thought of later. The death count is likely padded by the two full wipes. We wiped our first go through in the cathedral but the dice were extremely against us that night. We later wiped against the first real boss of this book the drow ghoul/cleric combo.

I think the encounter that caught us off guard the most and honestly should have been a wipe but wasn't due to me having a character backup already was the drider on the cliff side. We missed the log trap, it knocked all of our party except for myself into the river, I jumped after my compatriots and the drider then lightning bolts the entire party.

Were it not for the crocodile race from aaw who's name i can't remember blood rager I had on deck swimming up and rescuing the living party members(after eating the dead ones of course), it would have been a wipe for sure.

[Ualaa]

The guy who didn't like RA the most, who happened to have 27 lost characters through 72 sessions of play, likes to gamble and is more than a bit reckless.
He didn't like the dungeon delve, with the abundance of traps.
He might not like the adventure, if it punishes for poor decisions, but at least for the first several sessions anything that is not what we were doing is probably going to be great in his book.

The other guy who didn't want to do another RA style, was most against the lack of direction.
RA was essentially a sand-box style, where you're delving to acquire loot which is better than you can craft or buy elsewhere, but there isn't a lot of story unless you add that.
That player said it wasn't so much the difficulty, but the lack of direction.
He actually said he would prefer a rail-road style where they have a strong storyline to follow and lack of options wasn't a bad thing.

The rest of the group were having a blast.
Difficult, for sure, but they were enjoying the challenge.



Two players who used to be semi-regulars are both joining us for tomorrow.
So seven players... a lot more by way of resources.

But that can slow down the table some too.

Better too many, than not enough.

[willoftheway]

Well if it's not the outright difficulty that turned them against rappan athuk you should actually be fine. I wouldn't call it a railroad but there is definitely strong, definitive direction for the campaign.

We're running with 5 - though supposed to be 6, that 6th is elusive as any drow I've ever encountered. Our current party makeup is a pow exp archetype monk, a cursed razor focused harbinger, a spheres archetype Oracle healer who dabbles in telekinetics, the tomb raider ish archetype alchemist who's bombs really hurt undead but not so much on the living as our primary trap finder and such, and myself playing a pathfinder conversion of the ebberon artificer covering most of our magical control needs through judicious wand application. The 6th is I believe a fire based Oracle/sorcerer who's going to do mystic Theurge. This seemed an odd pick from this player because usually he's one of our more high op players, but then this campaign has seen him largely absent so it's possible I just haven't gotten to see some obscure trick he's trying to pull off.

This latest combo has definitely been our strongest and most effective at chewing through content in this book and is the group continuing on into the main book.

[Ualaa]

We added the other two players for session two.

One went with a Human Fighter (dimdweller -- everyone has taken a darkvision racial alternate), who then went into Brawler when we hit 2nd level.

The other went with a (SoP) Shifter. He's a dwarf.



The pace of the adventure, or rather assuming the party will move at least this distance in a given day.
With the bad guys able to cover so much distance.
And the party needing to at least match that, if they want to not fall behind; or better, go faster if they want to catch up.
That's the difficulty of this one.

The players are starting to hate the drow, but they all love the adventure so far.
In my books, that's a win.
The encounters are rather challenging, even for seven players and a Paladin they convinced to adventure with them.

We lost the Paladin to the Centuars, who knocked one of the players out but didn't finish him.
We had two players unconscious, but not dead, to the Owlbear.
We had two players unconscious, but not dead, to the Crossbow guys at the broken bridge.

Basically out of resources, they slept on the other side of the bridge.
And the Grizzly thing attacked them, on the 3rd watch.
A hard fight, given the state they were in.

I normally award experience at the end of a session, but took pity on them and we leveled to 2nd mid-session.

So far they're all loving it.



On your Rappan Athuk...

There are enough traps present and throughout, that you'll essentially need a trap guy all the way through.
And often, we would get as much experience through the traps, as the kills.

The difficulty is more punishing for poor decisions or being reckless and assuming you can get away with it.

Sure, it is 1st edition style.
So you may be on a level, for 1st-3rd characters, where most of the fights are EL 1-4, but there are two things that are EL 10 on that level.
The scout can in theory find them, make an educated guess that they're a bad idea to engage, and very possibly back away without engaging.
Not everything is immediately apparent, that they're above the party level, but most of the time you get an indication if you're looking for it.
If your party is willing to run, they'll go through fewer characters; three of our wipes were because they refused to run.
Once you can Dimension Door (or the equivalent) that helps... assuming you're willing to use it; one set of guys decided to fight to the death, to prove if they could do a hard battle or not -- and one PC interrupted the emergency AoE/Warp (Group Evac Teleport) that another was doing, by hitting him when he did not cast defensively (while not near any bad guys)... that resulted in a wipe.

I picked up the Expansion Volume, which is a similar style and difficulty to the main book.
For lower level guys, there is a four-level complex in the expansion (The Tunnels of Terror), that is good for levels 1-5 (or so).
There is also a bandit hideout that connects to those levels.
Combined, that greatly expands on what lower level guys can do, that isn't too hard on them.
With the Expanded Volume, the surface stuff and the Mouth of Doom, there's a decent amount of lower level stuff to do.

The Mouth of Doom (and three levels beneath) are a lot closer to the capabilities of a starting party than the main entrance through the Sunken Graveyard.
My group never went down the well, which is a shame...
I would recommend the PCs listen to NPCs in town... or talk with a caravan's guards who reminisce of RA, and indicate the Mouth of Doom is where they'd start.

I used the Player's Guide, which is essentially a whole lot of people around Zelkor's Ferry who talk of their adventures/perils within RA; I read aloud the first section, indicating the Mouth of Doom was considered the least suicidal option to enter the dungeon... some of my group read it, others didn't, but it has hints without saying take a boat to level 4.

The Cloister of the Frog God is another option, but that's a lot harder than the Mouth of Doom, Surface encounters, and Tunnels of Terror.
Although it is fairly comparable to the main entrance, or maybe a level or two down.

RA is deadly enough, that groups would likely wipe to the first encounter within the mausoleum of the Sunken Graveyard.
Going down the well is likely a wipe, if they explore that level a bit (unless they have a collective/telepathic link feature, which trivializes the nastiness... then it's just a really hard fight).

There are nasty things, that a group of level 20s won't likely beat on their first encounter, but you cannot get to them, until you're higher.

At the bottom of the well, there's a trapdoor thing, with three keys.
It doesn't specify where the keys are, within RA.

There's pretty good resources for RA, on the Froggodgames dot com site.

[Manyasone]

-snip- one PC interrupted the emergency AoE/Warp (Group Evac Teleport) that another was doing, by hitting him when he did not cast defensively (while not near any bad guys)... that resulted in a wipe.

Whut?
(I can't really express my disbelief in any succinct manner after reading that particular sentence)

[Ualaa]

Yeah...

It was a mob, which three or four levels previously had been their first (or second?) wipe.
They figured it might be doable, at their new level.
But they wouldn't really know if it was a case of he would have died in a round or two, if we had stayed until the end, instead of fleeing.

They make the pact, no one runs... we fight to the last man.
Anyone who flees will be executed by the survivors... if the party survives.

One guy changed his mind, when the fight was not going well.
And another guy interrupted his casting, so as agreed no one fled and the battle was to the death.

Avoidable wipe.

[willoftheway]

Well that definitely sounds like an interesting group lol

As far as what actually gets punished by rise of the drow it seems less like genuine mistakes and more like being too good that it verges on meta knowledge. For example the crossroads you come to after leaving ribalka that you only actually realize is a crossroads if your perception/survival is high enough. The drow splitting in to three groups, one not hiding their tracks at all(it's a trap! Says I when I hear that) one hauling the bulk of the prisoners, and another much better hidden but much smaller group diving straight through the forest.

We decide to chase the small group, pick off what we can before fighting a large force. We run smack into tree beard with an attitude. Now had our tank at the time not been something neither elven nor human, nor drop to one knee in reverence and splintery butt kissing, that thing would have turned us into mushy peas.

There are things that will run to join the first boss of this section if allowed as well. The drider being one of them. That was our second wipe. The boss fight which is already intense - fighting against a cleric carrying around a phylactery of negative channeling bolstering a drow ghoul with a serious attack bonus at level 2, 3 at best, is frakking painful. Add in a drider with a hard-on and a wipe is almost certainly imminent.

Once you're actually in the castle the drow have made their stronghold, recovering the prisoners too early by passing an insanely high for this level but reachable with optimization perception check will net the entire complex coming down on your heads. This fight we should have wiped on. But lucky timing with buff casts and the fact that the GMs dice clearly were upset with him that night got us by with no deaths but a nearly 80 percent resource expenditure.

I realize that some of this must sound like complaints, and in the moment they were happening they might actually have been. But make no mistake, when the GM closed the prologue book the wave of pride and accomplishment that crashed across our group was palpable. This campaign is worth the effort mechanically for those players who prefer that mindset, and worth it in roleplay opportunities thus far for those who prefer that one(not saying they are mutually exclusive, merely that most players have a lean in one direction or another and that this campaign brings enough to keep them all satisfied).

[Ualaa]

Our group is progressing slower than the adventure anticipates.

Encounters are broken up into: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3...
With the assumption the party will travel so far in a given day.
Since they're trying to catch kidnappers, with sacrificial victims.

My group is doing around half of what is anticipated.
So either the Drow are free and clear, or they're moving much slower than they could.
More likely, they're free and clear.
Meaning it isn't as long of a wait until the Holoth guys arrive, to take the victims.
So things are on a tighter schedule.

Maybe by the time they get to the stronghold, there aren't prisoners there any longer.
That will depend on the speed of their pursuit.
There will still be bad guys there, as the kidnapping is an ongoing thing until stopped.
And they may be able to catch up to the Holoth guys, who due to their numbers may not even care to conceal their tracks.

There seems to be two or three encounters, which the players feel at the time...
Whoever wrote this adventure was a cruel man.
But while they feel the encounter is going to beat them, as they go through it.
They've emerged victorious each time.
We lost the Paladin (from the group who interrupted the ceremony at Rybalka), who they convinced to accompany them, on the encounter with the Owlbear.
No PC has fallen, as in died.
Although, in addition to the loss of the Paladin, two PCs were knocked unconscious against the Owlbear.
And against the Centaurs, two more were reduced to negative (but not dead) hit points.

The encounters are not easy...
But they players are greatly enjoying having surpassed each one.
It's just that they're going a lot slower than the adventure anticipates -- maybe at half of the speed, resource management I suppose.
So far, they're all enjoying it to the last man.

[Manyasone]

Our group is progressing slower than the adventure anticipates.

Encounters are broken up into: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3...
With the assumption the party will travel so far in a given day.
Since they're trying to catch kidnappers, with sacrificial victims.

My group is doing around half of what is anticipated.
So either the Drow are free and clear, or they're moving much slower than they could.
More likely, they're free and clear.
Meaning it isn't as long of a wait until the Holoth guys arrive, to take the victims.
So things are on a tighter schedule.

Maybe by the time they get to the stronghold, there aren't prisoners there any longer.
That will depend on the speed of their pursuit.
There will still be bad guys there, as the kidnapping is an ongoing thing until stopped.
And they may be able to catch up to the Holoth guys, who due to their numbers may not even care to conceal their tracks.

There seems to be two or three encounters, which the players feel at the time...
Whoever wrote this adventure was a cruel man.
But while they feel the encounter is going to beat them, as they go through it.
They've emerged victorious each time.
We lost the Paladin (from the group who interrupted the ceremony at Rybalka), who they convinced to accompany them, on the encounter with the Owlbear.
No PC has fallen, as in died.
Although, in addition to the loss of the Paladin, two PCs were knocked unconscious against the Owlbear.
And against the Centaurs, two more were reduced to negative (but not dead) hit points.

The encounters are not easy...
But they players are greatly enjoying having surpassed each one.
It's just that they're going a lot slower than the adventure anticipates -- maybe at half of the speed, resource management I suppose.
So far, they're all enjoying it to the last man.

So even with SoP classes and PoW classes, which can effectively last all day in comparison to vancian casters and core martial classes it's still pretty hard?
That's nice to know...Do you have people who are interested in akashic classes or aren't you using Akashic Mysteries? and what about Ultimate Psionics
(Lots of 3rd party material, I know)

[thorr-kan]

On your Rappan Athuk...

<SNIP!>
My group never went down the well, which is a shame...

<SNIP!>
Going down the well is likely a wipe, if they explore that level a bit (unless they have a collective/telepathic link feature, which trivializes the nastiness... then it's just a really hard fight).

<SNIP!>
At the bottom of the well, there's a trapdoor thing, with three keys.
It doesn't specify where the keys are, within RA.

OK, I'll bite. Spoiler the response if you want to.

What's the big deal about the well? "Don't go down the well!" has become a warning meme.

[Manyasone]

I believe you fall into an encounter you don't really want to fall into. Especially at the level you encounter said well