Pathfinder Adventure Path #2: The Skinsaw Murders

Rise of the Runelords #2

by Richard Pett, Jason Bulmahn, James Jacobs

The Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path continues! A sudden string of brutal killings terrorizes the town of Sandpoint, and the killer's mark bears a familiar shape. Investigation leads to the Lost Coast's most notorious haunted mansion, a dilapidated ruin that has become the lair of a monstrous murderer. Yet this killer is but one of many, a member of a group of fanatic cutthroats calling themselves the Skinsaw Men. To defeat the cult, the PCs must travel to the bustling city of Magnimar to unravel the sinister source of these murders before they become the Skinsaw Men's next victims!

This volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path continues the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path and includes:

"The Skinsaw Murders," an adventure for 4th-level characters by Richard Pett.
Details on Magnimar, the City of Monuments, by F. Wesley Schneider.
Information on the church of Desna, goddess of dreams, stars, and travel, by Sean K Reynolds.
The second installment of the Pathfinder's Journal, by Jason Bulmahn.
Six new monsters by Jason Bulmahn, James Jacobs, Richard Pett, and F. Wesley Schneider.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Fantasy, Reference, Games

95 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 2007

Reviews

[Ty Arthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Way back when I was still regularly DMing, I ran most of this adventure path as it was coming out month to month, and it was one of our group's favorite tabletop experiences. Following Burnt Offerings, which flirted with the horror elements, Skinsaw Murders goes full speed ahead in that direction.

Asylums filled with the stark raving mad, farmsteads covered in living scarecrows and the undead, and a serial killer stalking the streets of Sandpoint kick things off. While the adventure as written has the PCs working as deputies to solve the murders, our group went a different route and had the player running Valeros wake up next to the first victim -- having taken to trysting with Ven Vinder's daughter -- and immediately get arrested as the main suspect.

The real goods here though are undoubtedly found in the haunted house segment, which is where Paizo got its start in earnest with using the "haunts as traps" mechanisms that would show up in many future adventures and rulebooks. This is also where the adventurers finally get to leave the sleepy town of Sandpoint and head to the big city of Magnimar.

The Magnimar gazeteer in the back is one of my favorite parts of this issue, bringing up the Hellknights for the first time and offering tons of adventure material. Oddly enough -- perhaps because its a more general overview rather than a building-by-building description like in the previous adventure -- Magnimar oddly feels less cosmopolitan and more homogeneous than the tiny backwater of Sandpoint.

Desna gets a write up here, and while she's one of my least favorite Golarion deities, the fluff here is top notch with the descriptions of various planar allies, wildly different priests, and various myths and relics that have plenty of adventure opportunity.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread: April 2020 - 5★
Creeps me out every time, especially that crying

Reread: Feb 2019 - 5★

2012/13 - 5★
I listened to this over and over that year, I don't even know how many times. I still remember the feeling I got when I first did, literal goosebumps

[Jocke · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little basic and several of the encounters are not that well connected. They rely upon a single piece of evicence leading the investigation forward. Not bad as such, though.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Basic Plot: People are being murdered in a horrific way and it is up to the PCs to investigate the trail all the way to its end to find who is really behind the crimes.

This is book 2 of 6 in the Rise of the Runelords adventure path, written for D&D 3.5 rules in the Pathfinder world.

I am continually impressed by the writing for these adventures. They are very organic, and when a question arises in my mind about something, inevitably it gets answered within a page or two. The monster/bad-guy stats are very clearly broken down, and their tactics in battle or motivations for what they do are completely clear. With as creative a group of players as I have, they tend to work around adventures. With the thoroughness of the information in this book, I have confidence that no matter what wild goose chase they go off on, I'll have the tools to direct them through the adventure.

[James Noyes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was another good story (not a linear read). My players jumped in and took the story in the right directions. It was a great adventure, blending dungeons and dragons with a haunted house story. I was really hesitant to work with the haunted house as a dungeon, but it worked out in the end. The characters were taken to a variety of locations in this too. I would really like to have just a LARGE dungeon. The story is building though, and the characters are really getting into the thick of things.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best horror-themed RPG modules I have ever read. Richard Pett does an outstanding job of making a creepy game in a D&D universe which is not known for ramping up the fear factor (Ravenloft notwithstanding). Even if you don't plan to run this as part of the Rise of the Runelords campaign, any DM owes it to themselves to pick up the book for the write-up of Foxglove Manor, one of the best haunted houses in D&D.