Legacy of Fire #1 - Howl of the Carrion King Review
Sunday, April 11, 2010 at 11:30AM One of my first moves after Pathfinder was released was to order the first three books (of 6) of the Legacy of Fire adventure path. In November we kicked off with a short character creation session, and concluded book 1, the Howl of the Carrion King, after 12 sessions, which including 3-4 encounters that I rigged up myself to ensure my PCs were of a level to challenge the adventure’s final boss, Xulthos.
I’d like to tell you how it all went down from a product review standpoint. But first…
Background
The Legacy of Fire Adventure Path is the last adventure Paizo created using the D&D 3.5 ruleset. Had I known this I would have ordered one of the other adventure paths—it is the age of Pathfinder, after all—but I couldn’t resist some hot (I mean arid) genie action. As you probably know, the 3.5 rules are fully compatible with Pathfinder, so short of a few tweaks and a bit of math every now and again, every critter and encounter has gone smoothly.
The Good
The book itself looks and feels good. The art is nice, with several pieces specifically for the adventure. Maps are drawn well, and the package includes new monsters, a separate adventure site (which I opted not to run), and some background information about the setting. It’s a strong package overall with some interesting bits that can help season the adventure. Your group will be especially well-served by downloading and reading the Legacy of Fire player's guide, a welcome staple among Paizo's adventure paths.
Almah Roveshki, merchant princess and representative of the enigmatic Pactmasters.
The Bad
Anyone who has run a home brew campaign knows that you can spend hours working prior to each session for each hour of game time at the table, and Howl of the Carrion King will save you a great deal of that time. Still, the text is dense, so while it’s nice to be able to simply read and absorb to prepare your sessions, you’ll still need to comb over paragraphs of content to run this adventure without a hitch. A soft complaint, I know, but it’s worth noting that this is not really a pick-up-and-play style of adventure path.
I prep (read and reread) sections of the adventure for about two hours before most sessions, which doesn’t include map-drawing, emails, and critter review. I would guess I prep for around three hours total for most 4-5 hour sessions for Legacy of Fire, although much of that prep time carries over to sessions that follow, and sometimes I read just to be entertained. You could probably get away with less.
The Good
The story itself is a fun mix of an ancient war between genies, abused wishcraft, and standard set pieces like baddy X has rallied an army from what are usually disparate, if still troublesome, savage humanoids. The pacing is nice in that the PCs are offered a good deal of latitude to develop their own plans of attack. The adventure outlines many events that occur independently while the PCs are adventuring to ensure that the setting lives, breathes, and throws delicious curveballs at your and your players.
Highlights for me came in the anticipation of facing a mysterious creature that removed the hearts of its victims—the conjecture from my PCs around those gruesome deaths was hilarious. I also drew lots of joy from the immediate and enduring pure hate engendered in mischievous gremlins called pugwampis. Finally. the built-in story hooks and character traits created a good deal of strong off-the-cuff roleplaying and adventure ideas that I think my players enjoyed.
Thought was put into the story, and it shows. More interesting and enjoyable gaming was the result.
The Bad
I hope you like gnolls. While not present in every encounter by a long shot, I was tired of describing barking, yelping, snarling dog-men by session 4. Get used to them, and brainstorm some ideas on alternate tactics or approaches to use to keep the combats interesting.
It was worthwhile for me to outfit the gnoll tribes in different ways so they fought a little differently.
The Good
Character power progression is steady, helped along by a good mix of treasure provided by the adventure, and (if you have the right PCs) the opportunity to improve character power through visible story hooks (traits, achievements feats, and story-based developments—great ideas, all).
I used the alternate campaign traits suggested in the Legacy of Fire player’s guide, which effectively bound the party to the adventure while providing nice little bonuses that amounted to a free feat. Well worth it. I printed the Legacy of Fire Player’s Guide and it is still being referenced occasionally by my players.
The Bad
Howl of the Carrion King contains a few mistakes that are usually little more than annoying, but occasionally have a negative effect on the game. Character inconsistencies are rare, but they exist (resembling multiple drafts that were not properly consolidated), and bad math or typos conspire to increase or decrease NPC effectiveness.
These mistakes are few, but notable.
I should also point out that by the end of Howl, my booklet was trashed. Make photocopies of maps and critters early to save your poor binding.
Should You Buy It?
Probably. Howl has been a lot of fun, and a desert campaign (coupled with new Gods and locations from Golarion) has been a refreshing change for my group. If you’re looking to shake things up a little or start a new Pathfinder/3.5E campaign, you could do a lot worse than Howl of the Carrion King. I think it’s worth the money.
At this point, though, there is a wealth of pure Pathfinder modules available (like Kingmaker, which a friend is about to run for me—joy!). Howl is a fine product, but there may be better elsewhere as Pathfinder's development cycle continues to hum along.
You can order Howl of the Carrion King right now from Amazon for $15, or $20 direct from the good people at Paizo.
Thanks for reading, and drop me a comment if you have a comment on this or any other Pathfinder adventure path.
Pathfinder, adventure path in 3E, Pathfinder, review 
Reader Comments (5)
Thanks for the review. I also picked up the first couple pdfs for the LoF adventure path last year when Paizo was running a sale. While, I'm not going to ever run the entire adventure path, I am planning on heavily borrowing from the first two adventures to use in my upcoming desert-set 4E campaign. I'm glad to hear that the pugwampis are as hate inspiring as they sound like they will be since I'm looking forward to introducing them as the group's first set of adversaries before they move up to trying to tackle the gnolls (which in 4E are a lot tougher than in previous additions).
Glad to see you back and posting, Ike!
Hey MJ. Yes, pugwampis are SOOO hated. Facing them at low levels (which is almost certainly when you'll face them) is awful. Nothing like combining low attack bonuses with having to reroll and take the lowest. Ugh.
There's actually a charm you can buy, outlined in the supplementary material for the adventure, that repels gremlins of all kinds. A gremlin bell, I think it was called. I failed to notice it before we had completed the pugwampi sections, though, so I missed out on some fun roleplaying of the kind of merchnt crazy enough to peddle gremlin bells.
Thanks, Swordgleam! It's good to be back. I've settled on a very modest posting schedule to help get things back on track. I'll see you around the internets.
Thanks for the review. I own this, have skimmed this, but have yet to run it for anyone.
I'm still trying to decide which PF (or Dungeon magazine) adventure we're going to try. There are so many good ones, it's hard to decide.
There really are some good ones. From a player's perspective, I am really enjoying playing through Kingmaker right now—very clear goals and a sense of constant accomplishment—but some of that may be because I'm loving the new Summoner class. I can't comment on how it is to DM, except to say that, as usual, there's quite a lot to read.
Drop me a line on any of the others you try out!