The Eight Arms and the Empire of Sin is the fourth campaign to end in the Eight Arms universe. After their escapades in dwarven lands left the Eight Arms persona non grata, the crafting team is sent to the Wild South as part punishment and part comeback. In short order they find themselves under attack by strange creatures who kill especially sinful locals, which leads them into a plot by the king of desert giants and the mysterious prophet who caused him to change from an immoral leader to a paragon of virtue.
Here’s what I learned from running this campaign:
- Remember what I said about disparate character abilities? This campaign was that post turned up to eleven. I got a lot of experience in using, creating, and modifying monsters to be a threat to the party haves but not an instant-kill to the party’s have-nots, with varying degrees of success.
- Pathfinder is real bad at boss monsters. At one point in this campaign a summoner managed to knock a campaign villain from 100% health to 15% on the first initiative pass of a fight, which is just the most egregious example of many across both this and my other ongoing (?) Pathfinder campaign. I don’t remember bosses being this easy in 3.5E, though that may be my 4E experience clouding my memory. It’s clear that if I want bosses that last more than two rounds I’ll have to write a mechanic for it.
- Terrain is kind of wasted in Pathfinder. I’m used to doing terrain for 4E but players and monsters aren’t as mobile in Pathfinder, mostly because full attacks are a thing. Often the players didn’t use the full map provided and only rarely did they interact with the terrain unless it was part of the battle, and any choke point was thoroughly abused by both sides. I think I internalized this more than recognizing it explicitly because I can see how my maps got less and less complex over the campaign while nobody batted an eye.
Given the option, here’s what I would change:
- I should have brought in more western tropes. The campaign’s high concept was “The Wild West”, and we did eventually have a bank robbery, a cattle drive, and a defend-the-ranch scenario. But we never had a shootout, a meeting at high noon, or an encounter on a train (among other things), and the only proper posse was organized by the party. Since it’s unlikely that I’ll run another Wild West campaign in short order, that’s a lot of missed opportunities.
- Speaking of missed opportunities, I should have done better foreshadowing, especially of the campaign twist. It’s a lot harder to foreshadow when you only have vague ideas about what happens in the end and let the players fill in everything in between. I found that I basically had to remember my goal in every interaction, which took me a while and consumed a thread in my brain that I really could have used elsewhere. I guess this is largely a limitation of player-driven plots, especially in long campaigns.
I still have a file of ideas for Eight Arms campaigns, but it might be time to retire these characters for a bit. Mostly I’m glad I got the sinspawns and rakshasa out of my system; I’ve been wanting to run a campaign with those guys since I read about them. Desert giants, especially the nerfed version I used, less so.