Cover of Dungeons & Dragons module Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Art by Erol Otus
In the early ’80s we got to see some truly legendary adventures hit the shelves. Some of the deadliest and most memorable were the S series of modules – Tomb of Horrors (S1), White Plume Mountain (S2), Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (S3)and Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (s4). Of these the science fiction / fantasy mashup that was S3 ( ranked the fifth-best Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by Dungeon magazine in 2004) was my personal favorite.
Now it is the second decade of the 21st century and I play and design for Pathfinder, so it is only natural that I would be interested in how to pull off that classic adventure under modern rules.
So here are some resources online for the adventurous DM who wants to either run a reboot of S3 or just throw his/her players a curve by throwing some sci-fi elements into the game.
First off is Return Expedition to The Barrier Peaks, a blog post by WotC showing how to use d20 Future to run it under 3.x rules. There are a few things that can be harvested and adapted, but most will require some fine tuning to bring them in line with Pathfinder design. That said it is the one place you can find stats for the Powered Assault Armor in the module.
Then come the juicy bits – official Paizo rules for many of the things you will need. (Note that info on future weapons is in the Robot entry.) All links below go to data on the d20PFSRD, the best Pathfinder resource online and one I am proud to be a collaborator on.
Androids – a full fledged character race from Numeria that will work quite well in our reboot.
Robots – The baseline robot type is presented including four distinct ‘bots – the Annihilator (CR 16), Gearsmen (CR 4), Machine Soldier (CR 4), Mechanical Viper (CR 2) and Myrmidon (CR 11). In addition this entry contains Pathfinder rules for force fields, lasers and plasma weapons.
The Froghemoth (CR 13) – The main entry is the Paizo version as it appeared in the first Beastiary. It also includes links to several variants if you wish to mix things up.
Froghemoth Eggs (CR 2)- Because you always need more things covered in goo.
Vegypygmys – (CR 1/2 – 6)From the Tome of Horrors Complete we get a variety of them from Chiefs to commoners.
The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing (CR 8) – The Paizo version from Beastiary 3
So there you have it, a little sci-fi to jazz up your game. Robots are not just for Numeria!
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