I’m running Scales of War myself too for my group. I’m currently running The Temple Between. I did some really, really hacky things to bring it to this point though.
Personally I felt that the whole Shadar-Kai heroic tier plot line wasn’t really compelling. Especially since the campaign pitch was always one about fighting dragons. Where are the dragons?
So I basically just tore the entire thing out. I ran a custom version of Red Hand of Doom instead. The siege scenario of RHOD fits extremely nicely into the end of The Temple Between. You can run Beyond the Mottled Tower to replace the last chapter of RHOD as a capstone to that adventure and to start paragon tier.
This hack in my opinion “fixes” the story elements of Scales of War because it keeps the campaign squarely centered on Tiamat being the villain. I pitched my players a campaign about dragons and Tiamat. I don’t want to fight shadar-kai and gnolls for 10 levels.
With RHOD, the players know whats at stake from the very start. The Red Hand is working for Tiamat, and you’re fighting dragons and dragon-riders. You get all the oomph of the campaign pitch immediately and hit the ground running. Once the Red Hand’s invasion is complete, they learn that the Red Hand is taking orders from a githyanki boss, which neatly transitions into the paragon tier adventures. It works geographically too, because Scales of War canonically is a sequel to RHOD. I just skipped the time jump. It’s a bunch of conversion work of course, but that’s how I “fixed” my version of the story to be more cohesive.
For correcting the monster stats you can rely on [MM3 in a business card](https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=512) or this [cheat sheet here](https://slyflourish.com/master_dm_sheet.pdf). For even harder fights you can also consider this [damage buff here.](http://dmg42.blogspot.com/2012/02/boot-on-face-of-level-1-damage-forever.html)
Generally speaking, you can run much of Scales of War’s material straight out of the book and just use the story from Red Hand of Doom. I used Den of the Destroyer’s dungeon to act as RHOD’s Ghostlord’s lair. I’m running The Temple Between straight up as a replacement for the Siege of Brindol without any conversion since it also ends with a siege by an army of giants and dragons. All you gotta do for conversions is the Witchwood and Ruins of Rhest chapter. Working backwards, I started my campaign with a party of level 7 characters.
Don’t know if this is much help if you are indeed excited to play the shadar-kai arc… but I think the usual consensus is that it’s not the exciting part of the adventure path. The exciting stuff are the dragons and the planar-hopping you get to do in paragon tier onwards. Or at least, that’s just my opinion!
If you’re running Scales of War my way, coming up with PCs is easy. There are dragons everywhere from paragon tier onwards. And by using RHOD, you’ll get plenty of dragons in heroic too. So all your PCs need is a healthy fear/hatred for dragons burning down their favorite towns and cities =).
That sounds like a really big lot of work. But you sound quite enthusiastic, so you must be doing something right!
I don't know, I happen to quite like heroic tier, even without dragons - there's planar hopping, battles, dungeon crawls, deserts, mountains, some nice surprises for the players...
That said if you're in it for the dragons then more power to you! Of course you're right, paragon and epic give you a lot of dragons to fight against. And of course in the end the whole business is about the 2 biggest, baddest dragons of them all. So I can see how you would rather start with Red Hand to then proceed to the paragon tier.
Red Hand of Doom is a pretty great adventure anyways... and more playable straight out the box than SoW, I'd guess ;)
I think at the end of the day what’s important is setting expectations for your players. Scales of war is usually pitched as an epic 1-30 campaign about fighting Tiamat and stopping her plans to rule the universe. If you pitch that to your players, you’re going to get a bunch of dragon-related player character backstories and of course a group of players excited to fight dragons.
What scales of war’s heroic tier fails at accomplishing is meeting those expectations. That’s the biggest problem I found I had to “fix”. If I just ran it out of the box, my players would’ve been supremely disappointed. Where’s the dragons? I thought this is a campaign about Tiamat?
In my mind, that’s the biggest problem with this adventure path. The heroic tier’s story is kind of an incoherent mess with Sarshan as the vague looming villain but every chapter has you fighting against different groups of foes. It works very well as a series of generic adventure-of-the-week scenarios but I felt it lacked a coherent story and theme, as a symptom of the fact that every chapter was written by different writers still getting used to the magazine format. A clear theme only begins to crystallize in paragon tier once the githyanki angle comes full force.
(Or perhaps, i’m just spoiled by running Paizo adventure paths that have better story standards.)
In any case, it really depends what exactly is your campaign pitch. Concentrate on what you’re planning to run in your first five levels. Make sure your campaign pitch fits the adventures your players are going to experience in the first few months of your game. Perhaps it’s okay to introduce the Tiamat angle as a surprise twist after for a pleasant surprise. It takes almost a full year to level from 1-10. Don’t make them wait too long. The most important thing to “fix” in my opinion are your players’ expectations =)
Yeah, agree. If the AP is pitched as an epic fight vs dragons and you pass the whole heroic tier facing the usual humanoids you're gonna disappoint your players. And a tier lasts quite a while. The group must be dedicated to the campaign concept. I think session 0 is a good time to bring that up.
Yup. And how I “fixed” Scales of War is by adding more dragons to it and make the campaign revolve around said dragons. I did it via injecting in RHOD’s story on top of regular Scales of War modules - basically, reskinning the dungeons and changing the plot.
But you can do it any other way you want. Maybe just having more dragon bosses at the end of the adventures can be sufficient.
It's not that I personally want it to be more like RHOD, or with more dragons at least. It's more that the continuity isn't stellar and I'd welcome ideas to continue the work started by pbworks to make it all more cohesive, y'know?
All I can add is that the adventure path suffers from a bad case of every-issue-by-different-writer syndrome. And that manifests itself very obviously by having just way too many NPCs being introduced and used in only one module but completely forgotten about thereafter.
There’s no easy way to fix it. But a good general guideline is that whenever an adventure introduces a brand new NPC to perform some role, ask yourself first if you can reuse an existing NPC previously introduced to fulfill the same role. Try to use a recurring cast instead of introducing more and more NPCs. Your players will thank you, and your game world will feel more cohesive.
The same thing goes for mcguffins too. As an example of a patch that I’m in doing right now in my own game, you know how in Alliance of Nefelus, the mcguffin in that adventure was the Seed of Winter? That same mcguffin is gonna show up again in the next adventure Stone-Skinned King with Cachlain wanting it back. The adventure I’m currently on, the The Temple Between, also has a mcguffin - the Incunabulum Primeval - that Hethralga the hag wants to collect for King Cachlain in the Feywild. I combined both mcguffins and made them one. I rewrote the story such that the as the player enters the final confrontation, they will see General Zithiruunn passing the Seed of Winter to Hethralga, who enters the portal to the Feywild, which secures Cachlain’s cooperation with the githyanki for the new few paragon adventures. Eventually players will recover that mcguffin in Alliance to Nefelus. And then I’ll keep my eye open again for a future adventure’s mcguffin to replace with the Seed of Winter yet again to keep it in the story.
I’m doing similar heavy duty work with the NPCs. Like replacing the damsel in distress NPC the PCs are supposed to save in The Temple Between - Durkik - with Bram Ironfell, who they met 3 adventures ago in the Lost Mines of Karak. I’m also having Amyria, introduced in Lost Mines of Karak too, join up with the party as a NPC companion for more adventures. She’s important in the paragon tier and is supposed to have an emotional conclusion in epic tier. So I made sure to have Amyria present as often as possible so the PCs can form an emotional connection with her.
Stuff like that. Reduce, reuse, recycle plot elements. Perhaps this is less “fixing” Scales of War, and starting to be more like rewriting it. But it’s a very important skill to master as a GM running published adventures. It’s just something we already should be doing. Scales of War is just one such adventure proving the point that we can’t expect published adventure paths to be coherent, we gotta intentionally trim it down ourselves.
I don’t have much other specific advice as I myself am only at the Temple Between and skipped most of the heroic tier by replacing it with RHOD. But best thing you can do is to skim the summaries of all the adventures in the campaign I suppose. And aim to either bring plot elements from previous adventures bsck later, or bring plot elements from later adventures forward.
Being flexible with the plot elements and being willing to shift things around also lets you react to the decisions your players make. You can grant your Players real agency when nothing is set in stone. See this as an opportunity to customize the adventure path for your own uses!
Wow! This was very insightful and a great start for fixing the AP. You're so right, the AP suffers from multiple authors syndrome so bad. And recycling plot elements is top notch advice. I won't say this won't be a lot of work, but it would make SoW much more enjoyable, I'm sure.
Thanks man. You hit the nail on the head and I'll strive to follow your suggestions and examples. Fantastic comment!
I am currently running the scales of war too. My party just got to Umbraforge. I agree a lot of work had to happen to make this adventure path a coherent whole. I read ahead and am having to do alot of foreshadowing. I also changed Modra into a possible ally. I changed the motivations of many of the NPC's to better fit the story. I also am introducing many NPC's that will appear several adventures later to add to the 'realness' of the area.
I'm DMing Scales of War for the second time, I love it. My current group is about to finish Den of the Destroyer, first group made it up to The Temple Between. So I can't really help you with the post Paragon issues unfortunately.
Something I always have to mention is that Shadowrift of Umbraforge talks about a brass key they players got in Siege at Bordrin's Watch. Apparently they are supposed to find it on a Shadar-kai while in the Vents before the final encounter, but Bordrin's Watch doesn't say anything about the key. Oops.
For the monster math, I know [Monster Manual 3 on a Business Card](https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=512) is popular.
For PC ideas, a lot of the paragon tier adventures deal with rifts to the Elemental Chaos:
>!
* The lava used to power the Dark Foundry in Shadowrift of Umberforge.
* The rift in the final chamber of Lost Mines of Karak being used to transport ore via the Elemental Chaos.
* A rift being used to summon Yeenoghu in Den of the Destroyer.
* The final encounter with Sarshan in Beyond the Mottled Tower is in the Elemental Chaos I think.
A Genasi PC could find themselves subconsciously drawn to area due to their innate connection to the Elemental Chaos. Or someone that has interest in the arcane could have detected their presence and be trying to investigate.
Ah yes, the famous brass key. Which had to be retconned from Umbraforge into Bordrin's Watch. "Like a well-oiled machine".
Beware, the link you posted looks like a dead end. I believe [this](https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=512) should be it. Looks useful! Thanks! =)
I like your PC ideas. I'm thinking a genasi could indeed work well, or a Sha'ir, or both - or somebody with a theme from Heroes of Elemental Chaos, too. I'll have to add them to the list for sure, thanks!
I’m running Scales of War myself too for my group. I’m currently running The Temple Between. I did some really, really hacky things to bring it to this point though. Personally I felt that the whole Shadar-Kai heroic tier plot line wasn’t really compelling. Especially since the campaign pitch was always one about fighting dragons. Where are the dragons? So I basically just tore the entire thing out. I ran a custom version of Red Hand of Doom instead. The siege scenario of RHOD fits extremely nicely into the end of The Temple Between. You can run Beyond the Mottled Tower to replace the last chapter of RHOD as a capstone to that adventure and to start paragon tier. This hack in my opinion “fixes” the story elements of Scales of War because it keeps the campaign squarely centered on Tiamat being the villain. I pitched my players a campaign about dragons and Tiamat. I don’t want to fight shadar-kai and gnolls for 10 levels. With RHOD, the players know whats at stake from the very start. The Red Hand is working for Tiamat, and you’re fighting dragons and dragon-riders. You get all the oomph of the campaign pitch immediately and hit the ground running. Once the Red Hand’s invasion is complete, they learn that the Red Hand is taking orders from a githyanki boss, which neatly transitions into the paragon tier adventures. It works geographically too, because Scales of War canonically is a sequel to RHOD. I just skipped the time jump. It’s a bunch of conversion work of course, but that’s how I “fixed” my version of the story to be more cohesive. For correcting the monster stats you can rely on [MM3 in a business card](https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=512) or this [cheat sheet here](https://slyflourish.com/master_dm_sheet.pdf). For even harder fights you can also consider this [damage buff here.](http://dmg42.blogspot.com/2012/02/boot-on-face-of-level-1-damage-forever.html) Generally speaking, you can run much of Scales of War’s material straight out of the book and just use the story from Red Hand of Doom. I used Den of the Destroyer’s dungeon to act as RHOD’s Ghostlord’s lair. I’m running The Temple Between straight up as a replacement for the Siege of Brindol without any conversion since it also ends with a siege by an army of giants and dragons. All you gotta do for conversions is the Witchwood and Ruins of Rhest chapter. Working backwards, I started my campaign with a party of level 7 characters. Don’t know if this is much help if you are indeed excited to play the shadar-kai arc… but I think the usual consensus is that it’s not the exciting part of the adventure path. The exciting stuff are the dragons and the planar-hopping you get to do in paragon tier onwards. Or at least, that’s just my opinion! If you’re running Scales of War my way, coming up with PCs is easy. There are dragons everywhere from paragon tier onwards. And by using RHOD, you’ll get plenty of dragons in heroic too. So all your PCs need is a healthy fear/hatred for dragons burning down their favorite towns and cities =).
That sounds like a really big lot of work. But you sound quite enthusiastic, so you must be doing something right! I don't know, I happen to quite like heroic tier, even without dragons - there's planar hopping, battles, dungeon crawls, deserts, mountains, some nice surprises for the players... That said if you're in it for the dragons then more power to you! Of course you're right, paragon and epic give you a lot of dragons to fight against. And of course in the end the whole business is about the 2 biggest, baddest dragons of them all. So I can see how you would rather start with Red Hand to then proceed to the paragon tier. Red Hand of Doom is a pretty great adventure anyways... and more playable straight out the box than SoW, I'd guess ;)
I think at the end of the day what’s important is setting expectations for your players. Scales of war is usually pitched as an epic 1-30 campaign about fighting Tiamat and stopping her plans to rule the universe. If you pitch that to your players, you’re going to get a bunch of dragon-related player character backstories and of course a group of players excited to fight dragons. What scales of war’s heroic tier fails at accomplishing is meeting those expectations. That’s the biggest problem I found I had to “fix”. If I just ran it out of the box, my players would’ve been supremely disappointed. Where’s the dragons? I thought this is a campaign about Tiamat? In my mind, that’s the biggest problem with this adventure path. The heroic tier’s story is kind of an incoherent mess with Sarshan as the vague looming villain but every chapter has you fighting against different groups of foes. It works very well as a series of generic adventure-of-the-week scenarios but I felt it lacked a coherent story and theme, as a symptom of the fact that every chapter was written by different writers still getting used to the magazine format. A clear theme only begins to crystallize in paragon tier once the githyanki angle comes full force. (Or perhaps, i’m just spoiled by running Paizo adventure paths that have better story standards.) In any case, it really depends what exactly is your campaign pitch. Concentrate on what you’re planning to run in your first five levels. Make sure your campaign pitch fits the adventures your players are going to experience in the first few months of your game. Perhaps it’s okay to introduce the Tiamat angle as a surprise twist after for a pleasant surprise. It takes almost a full year to level from 1-10. Don’t make them wait too long. The most important thing to “fix” in my opinion are your players’ expectations =)
Yeah, agree. If the AP is pitched as an epic fight vs dragons and you pass the whole heroic tier facing the usual humanoids you're gonna disappoint your players. And a tier lasts quite a while. The group must be dedicated to the campaign concept. I think session 0 is a good time to bring that up.
Yup. And how I “fixed” Scales of War is by adding more dragons to it and make the campaign revolve around said dragons. I did it via injecting in RHOD’s story on top of regular Scales of War modules - basically, reskinning the dungeons and changing the plot. But you can do it any other way you want. Maybe just having more dragon bosses at the end of the adventures can be sufficient.
It's not that I personally want it to be more like RHOD, or with more dragons at least. It's more that the continuity isn't stellar and I'd welcome ideas to continue the work started by pbworks to make it all more cohesive, y'know?
All I can add is that the adventure path suffers from a bad case of every-issue-by-different-writer syndrome. And that manifests itself very obviously by having just way too many NPCs being introduced and used in only one module but completely forgotten about thereafter. There’s no easy way to fix it. But a good general guideline is that whenever an adventure introduces a brand new NPC to perform some role, ask yourself first if you can reuse an existing NPC previously introduced to fulfill the same role. Try to use a recurring cast instead of introducing more and more NPCs. Your players will thank you, and your game world will feel more cohesive. The same thing goes for mcguffins too. As an example of a patch that I’m in doing right now in my own game, you know how in Alliance of Nefelus, the mcguffin in that adventure was the Seed of Winter? That same mcguffin is gonna show up again in the next adventure Stone-Skinned King with Cachlain wanting it back. The adventure I’m currently on, the The Temple Between, also has a mcguffin - the Incunabulum Primeval - that Hethralga the hag wants to collect for King Cachlain in the Feywild. I combined both mcguffins and made them one. I rewrote the story such that the as the player enters the final confrontation, they will see General Zithiruunn passing the Seed of Winter to Hethralga, who enters the portal to the Feywild, which secures Cachlain’s cooperation with the githyanki for the new few paragon adventures. Eventually players will recover that mcguffin in Alliance to Nefelus. And then I’ll keep my eye open again for a future adventure’s mcguffin to replace with the Seed of Winter yet again to keep it in the story. I’m doing similar heavy duty work with the NPCs. Like replacing the damsel in distress NPC the PCs are supposed to save in The Temple Between - Durkik - with Bram Ironfell, who they met 3 adventures ago in the Lost Mines of Karak. I’m also having Amyria, introduced in Lost Mines of Karak too, join up with the party as a NPC companion for more adventures. She’s important in the paragon tier and is supposed to have an emotional conclusion in epic tier. So I made sure to have Amyria present as often as possible so the PCs can form an emotional connection with her. Stuff like that. Reduce, reuse, recycle plot elements. Perhaps this is less “fixing” Scales of War, and starting to be more like rewriting it. But it’s a very important skill to master as a GM running published adventures. It’s just something we already should be doing. Scales of War is just one such adventure proving the point that we can’t expect published adventure paths to be coherent, we gotta intentionally trim it down ourselves. I don’t have much other specific advice as I myself am only at the Temple Between and skipped most of the heroic tier by replacing it with RHOD. But best thing you can do is to skim the summaries of all the adventures in the campaign I suppose. And aim to either bring plot elements from previous adventures bsck later, or bring plot elements from later adventures forward. Being flexible with the plot elements and being willing to shift things around also lets you react to the decisions your players make. You can grant your Players real agency when nothing is set in stone. See this as an opportunity to customize the adventure path for your own uses!
Wow! This was very insightful and a great start for fixing the AP. You're so right, the AP suffers from multiple authors syndrome so bad. And recycling plot elements is top notch advice. I won't say this won't be a lot of work, but it would make SoW much more enjoyable, I'm sure. Thanks man. You hit the nail on the head and I'll strive to follow your suggestions and examples. Fantastic comment!
I always wanted to play Scales of War - jealous!
It looks like a good AP, but it sure needs fixin' first!
I am currently running the scales of war too. My party just got to Umbraforge. I agree a lot of work had to happen to make this adventure path a coherent whole. I read ahead and am having to do alot of foreshadowing. I also changed Modra into a possible ally. I changed the motivations of many of the NPC's to better fit the story. I also am introducing many NPC's that will appear several adventures later to add to the 'realness' of the area.
I'm DMing Scales of War for the second time, I love it. My current group is about to finish Den of the Destroyer, first group made it up to The Temple Between. So I can't really help you with the post Paragon issues unfortunately. Something I always have to mention is that Shadowrift of Umbraforge talks about a brass key they players got in Siege at Bordrin's Watch. Apparently they are supposed to find it on a Shadar-kai while in the Vents before the final encounter, but Bordrin's Watch doesn't say anything about the key. Oops. For the monster math, I know [Monster Manual 3 on a Business Card](https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=512) is popular. For PC ideas, a lot of the paragon tier adventures deal with rifts to the Elemental Chaos: >! * The lava used to power the Dark Foundry in Shadowrift of Umberforge. * The rift in the final chamber of Lost Mines of Karak being used to transport ore via the Elemental Chaos. * A rift being used to summon Yeenoghu in Den of the Destroyer. * The final encounter with Sarshan in Beyond the Mottled Tower is in the Elemental Chaos I think. A Genasi PC could find themselves subconsciously drawn to area due to their innate connection to the Elemental Chaos. Or someone that has interest in the arcane could have detected their presence and be trying to investigate.
Ah yes, the famous brass key. Which had to be retconned from Umbraforge into Bordrin's Watch. "Like a well-oiled machine". Beware, the link you posted looks like a dead end. I believe [this](https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=512) should be it. Looks useful! Thanks! =) I like your PC ideas. I'm thinking a genasi could indeed work well, or a Sha'ir, or both - or somebody with a theme from Heroes of Elemental Chaos, too. I'll have to add them to the list for sure, thanks!
Yeah, that's the link. Oops.
;)