Kingmaker: Sound of a Thousand Screams, Post-Mortem

The Queen is dead, long live the Queen! The players weathered the blooms, restored Briar to her full might, uprooted a part of the First World, defeated a dragon, killed scores of enemies, defeated Nyrissa in her own home… and then turned around and restored her! All in all, it was quite the ride.

Of all of the adventures in Kingmaker, Sound of a Thousand Screams is probably the most linear. Rather than offering up a sandbox to explore and a threat to provide some motivation, this outing puts the PCs’ kingdom under sustained attack from the get-go, and then gives them a couple of dungeons to clear out on their way to the finale. As a result, there’s not as much room for side plots as there is in the other chapters, which could be good or bad depending on your predilections.

Overall I thought this was a good adventure, though it’s hard to compare it to the others as it’s very different in character. And it does suffer from the same flaw as the others in the Adventure Path – events start off with a villain attack (a sustained attack, this time around), and then the baddies sit in their lair and wait to be killed.

In any case, let’s take a look at the different parts of the last chapter of the AP.

The Blooms

aka “the Month of Destruction.” I had made a bunch of changes to this part of the adventure to enhance or complicate the threats, which I believed were a bit pedestrian. And easy! I suspected that placing most of the encounters outdoors, where the PCs can exploit their superior range and mobility, would turn these combats into cake-walks. Given our experiences with the blooms where I did not constrain the environment, I feel I was proven right. On top of that, the encounter levels don’t take into account that these encounters are almost certainly the only battles the PCs will be fighting that day, so if you’re looking to push your players in order to sell the threat I think some work needs to be done on them.

The one big disappointment for me was the final bloom, the lesser Jabberwock. I’m pretty sure I could have thrown a “real” Jabberwock at the party and they would have handled it just fine. At the heart of the issue is all the usual stuff – the disparity in action economy, save or sucks against a single foe, etc. If I were to do it again, I would perhaps both use the full Jabberwock, and give it Legendary Actions and Resistance (ideas stolen from 5e D&D). Though if I gave it Legendary Resistance, I would also remove its Spell Resistance.

Thousandbreaths

It’s an “outdoor” dungeon. I didn’t get to really use this to its full extent because the players uprooted the whole dang thing after the 1st glade. Aside from maybe throwing some weird and wild obstacles at the players when they move from glade to glade, I didn’t feel the need to change much here. The encounters are easy, but the PCs will presumably have to endure several in a row.

The House at the Edge of Time

It’s an indoor dungeon! The big issue here for DMs to consider, in my opinion, is to what extent you want to stop or not stop the PCs from going straight to the end by flying through one of the upper-story windows, or by going through a PC-made hole in the roof, or so on. The only truly important locations in the house are the library on the top floor, where the PCs can finally learn all of Nyrissa’s secrets, including how to get into the Fable, and the room across the hall from the library, which they can use to enter the Fable. Everything else is easily skippable by savvy players, and unfortunately that includes both the Knurly Witch and the Wriggling Man. If we assume that players won’t be using the front door, then DMs should give some thought to how intruders will be prevented from making their own entrance, and/or how quickly they’ll be detected and how the inhabitants will respond.

The Fable

I’ve already said my piece on the design of the Fable. The shorter version is, it’s bad and it needs to be reworked. I am reasonably happy with how the version that I put together turned out. If I had to change anything, I would have upgraded the lair actions that summoned creatures to summon 1 for each PC, instead of just 1. I might also tone down the stormy mountain scene, which was a bit too punishing. The first mistake was, perhaps, using the official rules for extreme winds, which aren’t very fun unless the characters have invested in the Fly skill, which none of mine had.

As I wrote in the above link, I had initially planned on giving Nyrissa both Legendary Resistance and Legendary Actions. As the confrontation approached, I ditched the Legendary Resistance, as her touch AC and saves were already more than enough to avoid most threats. And then when the PCs actually engaged her, I got nervous and dropped the Legendary Actions too, but now I think that was a mistake. In looking back on the battles, especially the final one in her sanctum, I don’t see how the actions – which are relatively minor – would have made a noticeable difference in the outcome. But I do think that using them would have created more tension for the players.

The End

All in all, the adventure provided an enjoyable and interesting framework for the end of the campaign. I loved the fairy tale feeling of the whole thing, with the PCs having to stop eruptions of madness from overtaking their kingdom, and then storming the demesne of a mad fairy queen, fighting their way through a bunch of lackeys whose names begin with “The.”

There might have been a missed opportunity in not having the PC kingdom being involved in some way in the adventure’s second half. My players wanted to, and did, march an army into Thousandbreaths, for example. Maybe there could have been an epic mass combat with waves after waves of faerie forces at the end, with the PCs having to go in and overthrow the queen before their kingdom is overrun. Having the attacks on the PC kingdom continue past the end of the blooms, perhaps in a weaker or more mass combat-y form that didn’t require the personal attention of the PCs, could have put more pressure on the players to defeat Nyrissa as soon as they’re able. But given the problems with the kingdom building rules, it’s incredibly difficult to really press a kingdom when it reaches the size that the PCs’ kingdom undoubtedly will be at this point.

Next: musings about Kingmaker as a whole.