A Pathfinder/3.5 Compatible Adventure for 4-6 PCs of levels 1-2
Saben Behi is lauded amongst his peers for his study of the very nature of magic has touched lives across the world. But he remains secluded, and has suddenly fallen silent after suggesting he was studying the art of necromancy to extend one’s life forever.
The PCs arrive at the wizard’s tower to find it in disarray, rapidly dissolving into a rotten mess. What has Saben brought upon himself – or worse, what might he have become?
Also included in “Under His Skin”:
A new, low-key magical firearm for your gun-toting PCs
A contested borderlands and wizard academy to expand your campaign setting
Extra-planar intrigue, as the PCs get involved with an overly interested outsider
A new monster, the alchemic ameoba
Maps by three time ENnie Award winning cartographer Todd Gamble
HERO LAB files for everything contained within the adventure
$6.99Original price was: $6.99.$5.99Current price is: $5.99.
This module is 38 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 34 pages of content for this module, so let’s check it out!
This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players might want to jump to the conclusion.
All right, still here? Saben Behi, purveyor and scholar of magic, has turned to darker arts and managed to capture a worm-that-walks in his tower – a pathetic example of the ilk, but one nevertheless. Unfortunately for him, the thing has escaped with the help of the infernal master to which its soul is indebted and executed the captor. The PCs learn of the lapse in the sage’s communication and now are expected to find out what has befallen the sage.
After two days in a desert, the PCs encounter an impossible oasis, a jungle-maze which not only houses the sage’s tower, but which is also infested with stirges and seeks to disorient the PCs. It should be noted that the 3.5 and PFRPG-challenges in this section of the adventure are rather different from one another – nice if you want to run the module multiple times. The Ps might also find Saben’s dead messenger and a note here, making clear for once and all that something went rather wrong here. The exploration of the sage’s tower features, among others, vermin, an alchemical amoeba, a potentially helpful water mephit that can shed some light on what happened as well as a battle against an augur kyton and the worm-that-walks that proved to be the undoing of the mage. The pdf also includes a new pistol that never runs out of ammunition.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any significant glitches. Layout is all new – full-color, streamlined, more professionally looking, concise, easy to read and rather beautiful – kudos for this revised layout – it makes reading the pdf more comfortable than the older AaW-releases. The pdf comes fully bookmarked and in 3 version – the full color version, a printer-friendly version that is full color, but without background and another printer-friendly version that eliminates the color from e.g. the read-aloud boxes as well -Commendable! The pdf also comes with full herolab-support. As I’ve come to expect from AaW, the cartography is beautiful and both the general location and the tower featured come in two versions – one DM-version and a player-friendly version of the map, which is awesome and should be standard! Kudos again! The pdf also comes with a note as a handout, again, nice. I did like this adventure, but it should be noted that it’s among the shorter modules by AaW – the dual statblocks for 3.5 and PFRPG take up quite some space.
That being said, the writing of Michael McCarthy is solid and the module per se a nice exploration of a wizard’s tower. The one thing I didn’t wholly grasp was how the boss could overwhelm the creator of the tower – at its powerlevel, the boss is not particularly lethal for an archmage. I’m somewhat nitpickinghere and I’m aware of that – the fact is, that while the module is solid and fun, it lacks a truly intriguing, unique component that sets it apart, something wholly and truly outstanding – like additional/unique hazards in the jungle, rules for the trip across the desert, something akin to the swamp-boat mini-game in “Wild Things” or a smart puzzle . Thus, I’ll settle for a final verdict of “only” 4 stars.
This module is 38 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 34 pages of content for this module, so let’s check it out!
This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players might want to jump to the conclusion.
All right, still here? Saben Behi, purveyor and scholar of magic, has turned to darker arts and managed to capture a worm-that-walks in his tower – a pathetic example of the ilk, but one nevertheless. Unfortunately for him, the thing has escaped with the help of the infernal master to which its soul is indebted and executed the captor. The PCs learn of the lapse in the sage’s communication and now are expected to find out what has befallen the sage.
After two days in a desert, the PCs encounter an impossible oasis, a jungle-maze which not only houses the sage’s tower, but which is also infested with stirges and seeks to disorient the PCs. It should be noted that the 3.5 and PFRPG-challenges in this section of the adventure are rather different from one another – nice if you want to run the module multiple times. The Ps might also find Saben’s dead messenger and a note here, making clear for once and all that something went rather wrong here. The exploration of the sage’s tower features, among others, vermin, an alchemical amoeba, a potentially helpful water mephit that can shed some light on what happened as well as a battle against an augur kyton and the worm-that-walks that proved to be the undoing of the mage. The pdf also includes a new pistol that never runs out of ammunition.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any significant glitches. Layout is all new – full-color, streamlined, more professionally looking, concise, easy to read and rather beautiful – kudos for this revised layout – it makes reading the pdf more comfortable than the older AaW-releases. The pdf comes fully bookmarked and in 3 version – the full color version, a printer-friendly version that is full color, but without background and another printer-friendly version that eliminates the color from e.g. the read-aloud boxes as well -Commendable! The pdf also comes with full herolab-support. As I’ve come to expect from AaW, the cartography is beautiful and both the general location and the tower featured come in two versions – one DM-version and a player-friendly version of the map, which is awesome and should be standard! Kudos again! The pdf also comes with a note as a handout, again, nice. I did like this adventure, but it should be noted that it’s among the shorter modules by AaW – the dual statblocks for 3.5 and PFRPG take up quite some space.
That being said, the writing of Michael McCarthy is solid and the module per se a nice exploration of a wizard’s tower. The one thing I didn’t wholly grasp was how the boss could overwhelm the creator of the tower – at its powerlevel, the boss is not particularly lethal for an archmage. I’m somewhat nitpickinghere and I’m aware of that – the fact is, that while the module is solid and fun, it lacks a truly intriguing, unique component that sets it apart, something wholly and truly outstanding – like additional/unique hazards in the jungle, rules for the trip across the desert, something akin to the swamp-boat mini-game in “Wild Things” or a smart puzzle . Thus, I’ll settle for a final verdict of “only” 4 stars.
Endzeitgeist out.