The Sanctum of the Fiery Ladder
A D&D 3.5 Adventure for 7th – 9th Level
Winner of the June 2009 Adventure Writing Competition
By Joshua John Kitz with Kyle Hurtubise
This adventure of cults and devil worship is a real challenge to any party. A race against time to stop something terrible coming into the world and in the party’s way are cultist who are definitly mad, bad and dangerous to know.
Helping Joshua turn his idea into a fully formed adventure has been a real pleasure. He had this vision of a blood splattered, chaotic and crazy cult and he stuck with that vision. All I had to do was help polish the idea into something that any GM would be proud to run.
The end result is a 50 page adventure. Much larger than we expected but this is how big it should be. Asking Joshua to cut parts out just to keep the page count down would of been criminal. From its slow, investigative beginnings to the desperate final battle, there was nothing that could be lost without ruining the adventure.
Free Adventure Download
Sorry, the playtest period is now over. Sanctum of the Fiery Ladder will be available in as module from our PDF store in the next couple of months.
The full PDF can be downloaded using this link: Sanctum of the Fiery Ladder (Open-Playtest Edition)
It is completely free, all we ask is that you give us feedback on the adventure using the comments box below. On the back page of the PDF you will find some suggestion for the sort of information we are looking want but really, we just want to know what you think about it.
Everyone who takes part in the open-playtest will be sent a copy of the final PDF containing not only this adventure but also other winners of the Adventure Writing Competition.
August 8th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Skimming through it at first I didn’t think there were any stat blocks. They’re all at the end.
It actually looks really good to me as far as supplying the things I need to run an adventure. Sample lines of dialogue for some NPCs and the stat blocks have a lot of DCs, rules info and some tactics (like the guy with Improved Disarm having his disarm attack listed with its attack bonus).
August 10th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Glad your initial impressions were favourable. Do you feel that having all the stat blocks at the end will make for easy play at the table?
November 17th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
So, I’m running a campain in which the PC’s are trapped in a four way power struggle for the throne. One of the more evil leaders is using cultists in an attempt to summon devils to make his army stronger. When I saw this adventure, I nearly squeled with delight. However, they’re currently at Lvl. 13. I really like the adventure, and I really want to run it. Any ideas on how to make it appropriate for a group of 13th level PC’s?
Oh, they’re classes are as follows
Cleric, Monk, Ranger, Socerer, Fighter, and Rouge.
November 17th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
The simplest way will be to double all the NPC’s levels and replace the Bearded Devils with one of the higher HD devils. However access to some spells (such as teleport) may make the adventure easier than it should be.
November 27th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
@Chris Miliken
When Kyle originally ran the adventure we were level 10 (maybe 9).
Replace the Gargoyles at the entrance with 1 Stone Golem for an easy fight and or 2 for a fair-tough one.
You may want to augement the traps in damage and difficulty to disable.
If you wanted to exclude the possibilty of spells like teleport you could give the Sanctum a Cloister effect that prevents such things. I’d also consider the whole area unhallowed.
I may have some more thoughts on this later.