Exploring The Abomination Vaults – A Review Of Paizo’s Megadungeon

Welcome to the table.

From my earliest days at the table, I have always been fascinated by sprawling multi-leveled dungeons. As a player, having a chance to explore these colossal spaces always conjured up thoughts of “Who built this place?” and “Why was a massive collection of tunnels and traps needed as opposed to something more subtle and less ostentatious?”

I can admit that on more than one occasion I’ve gotten my party lost in the twists and turns of a deep dark dungeon because I wanted to see where darkened hallways went only to find myself face to face with a “Large rabid and otherwise pissed-off Owlbear” ready to rip us limb from limb.

To all those wondering, only the cleric, Frank of the Nine Fingers, and an Ape who was accidentally summoned over a quickly flowing river and promptly fell into the quickly rushing water where it was whisked away over a multi-storied waterfall perished in that encounter and as one of the survivors, I wore the skull of that Owlbear for years to come.

As a storyteller, I spend a ton of time on world-building to make sure that if my players ask the questions that plague me they have answers. Hours have been spent on the big asks like “What happened to the people who built this place?” and “How much was the gnoll work crew paid to do all this advanced tile work?” or even “What was the artisan who designed this intricate trap trying to say with the beautifully painted frescos that hid the copper pipes that sprayed out the purple worm poison?”

If my players have these questions I want to be sure I have at least considered them before they find themselves trying to match colored lanterns to century-old murals before swarms of fire beetles consume them.

Because of all of this, I tend to only really get curious about pre-written adventures and gaming modules when they feel lived in and have something more than just “Clear the room, loot, move on to the next room, repeat.” to offer. That is why I want to talk a bit about the adventure path for Pathfinder Second Edition “Abomination Vaults.”

Now out of the gate Pathfinder has provided amazing notes and safety tools to those who start their play from the creator’s box and a content warning that honestly warms my heart and lets people know what they are getting into. I really appreciate the callout on both of these fronts and it shows how dedicated Paizo is to protecting the players and setting up a table for success.

The campaign overview takes a quick dive into… well an overview of the campaign with a really useful Advancement tracking chart and then is followed up by a breakdown of the starting town of Otari. What I love most about this section ( aside from Vandy Banderdash a halfling cleric of Sarenrae with the particularly amusing trait of recommending literature tailored to the tastes of people she has only just met ) is the new Otari Backgrounds. Crafted to fit into the narrative of the adventure backgrounds like Bibliophile, Eldritch Anatomist, Ruin Delver, and my personal favorite Fogfen Tale-Teller (my Twitter handle is literally @AntonTaleTeller so I was delighted) these backgrounds really set up starting characters with built-in narrative flavor.

In typical P2 fashion, the book is well laid out with all the material you need to progress through the story as a Storyteller facilitating the adventure for your party. Ten chapters stuffed with monsters, traps, maps, and side quests that really test the party without feeling to unbalanced. Some notable moments are the Ghoul cult leader Nhakazarin and her horrific rotting statue of Belcorra.

The mechanics of this fight are a ton of fun and the foreshadowing in this particular area for the larger happenings of the story really starts to come together in a way that your party could spend a few hours just in this small room and not feel like they wasted any table-time.

Another big standout for me as I am a huge fan of the way Pathfinder presents Contract Devils is the encounter with Urevian who claims to be “no enemy” of the party and depending on how the Storyteller wishes to run this encounter can really open up a ton of future adventures and serve as a re-focusing of the players as by the time they have reached this point you have more than likely spent more than a few sessions working your way through the Abomination Vaults. It’s a real standout moment where the game design of the adventure merges beautifully with the narrative to serve to move the game forward.

The book finishes off with a section called the Adventure Toolbox and again P2 comes through with a nicely designed and laid out bit of game text. This section is full of items, artifacts, and spells. There is even a section on Infernal Contracts with tips for interpreting infernal contracts as a game mechanic. The book finishes out with a fairly robust collection of creatures including the Dhuthorex, a primordial-looking fish creature, and the wormlike servitors of the Neothelids, the Seugathi.

In closing, the whole of the Abomination Vaults adventure path comes in at over 250 pages and it stuffed with challenges, maps, art, and more. If you are a Storyteller who likes to run from premade adventures then you should give this offering from PAIZO a look.

Pick up your copy of Pathfinder Second Edition Abomination Vaults at this link and until next time, may you always check your infernal contracts and not get trapped in some truly worrying tasks that lead your party to ruin.