Abomination Vaults

When the mysterious lighthouse called Gauntlight glows with baleful light, the people of Otari know it’s an ominous prelude to sinister events. The town’s newest heroes must explore the ruins around the lighthouse and delve down into the dungeon levels beneath it. Hideous monsters, deadly traps, and vengeful ghosts all await the heroes who dare to enter the sprawling megadungeon called the Abomination Vaults!

Campaign Overview

Campaign Description

Abomination Vaults is a megadungeon campaign. What's a megadungeon? Simply put, it's just a very large dungeon. A megadungeon campaign is one that is centered around a megadungeon. That's not to say you'll never leave the dungeon, and never doing anything outside of it, but the dungeon is the primary focus of the campaign.

This is a sandbox-style campaign. The players have a lot of freedom to determine how they want to progress in the dungeon, in terms of which rooms to explore, when to descend to the next level of the dungeon, when to return to town to rest, and which sidequests to take on. Downtime play will absolutely be a part of the campaign, and will mostly be left up to the players to decide when and how much downtime they want to take.

You might think that a megadungeon implies a hack and slash campaign, but this isn't necessarily true. While Abomination Vaults is a combat-heavy campaign (like most Paizo-published adventure paths), there is still a lot of room for exploration, roleplaying, and storytelling, particularly as you engage with the various monstrous factions that have claimed ownership of each level of the dungeon.

For more information about the campaign, and a gazetteer of the nearby town of Otari, please see the Abomination Vault's Player's Guide, linked below.

Official Abomination Vaults Player's Guide

Length

Abomination Vaults is a 3-part Paizo adventure path which takes characters from level 1 to 10. As such, I expect it will run for approximately 6-9 months.

Number of players

I'm planning to run this campaign for either four or five players. For anyone who's interested in playing: I'd encourage you to sign-up, and then if we have too many players, I'll ask for volunteers to sit out. As a last resort, I'll make the final selection by random draw if necessary.

Player sign-up

• Ben Smith playing Tarquin
• Mike White playing Brekt
• Jason Lear playing Iago
• Matt Power playing Tovind Ashbud
• Gen Warren playing Hinoko/Ember

Characters

• Brekt: Male half-Orc Barbarian with Dragon Instinct who wields a greatsword. More Info
• Tovind Ashbud: Male Halfing Investigator, with an fascination in occult medicine.
• Hinoko/Ember: Female Kitsune Ranger, driven to explore ancient ruins.
• Tarquin: Male Azarketi, warrior with a troubled past, seeking to protect his people.
• Iago: Male Aasimar-Tengu Sorceror, a man with few friends, desperate to keep those he has.

Past Characters

• Mettsa Bosque: Slain by Nhakazarin, leader of the Cult of Canker.
• Cynthia Citrine: Return to Absalom, rattled by Mettsa's death, and the apparent return of Otari.
• Circe: Mysterious patron moved to prevent her from continuing her investigation into the vaults.

Ruling & House Rules

• Persistent damage - Persistent damage ends automatically when combat ends.
• Being hit while dying - Any damage taken while you have the dying condition will not increase your dying value.
• Healing on a long rest - All HP are restored on a long (i.e. 8 hours) rest.
• Misidentification of items - Normally, a critical failure when attempt to identify an item causes the character to incorrectly identify the item as something else. Until this functionality is implemented in Foundry, we'll just be treating any critical failures as regular failures instead.
• If you cast Message, you can use it to demoralize opponents within Message's range, provided you are using language (no intimidating glare)