It should be noted that I have not read this scenario, only played it. That said, that play-through wasn't terribly interesting. We ran it with a table of 5 (with a sixth player joining in the middle of the second fight), at tier 4-5. At our average party level, with access to second-level spells and many fist-level castings, we found the environmental factors trivial to deal with. By the time we reached the monastery, only our Paladin was fatigued, and that was down to natural 2 or 3 on his last Fortitude save. The environmental factors are probably bigger, well, factors at the lower tier, when the PCs just don't have the resources and capability to handwave them away.

Putting the PCs below enemies on clifftops, or between enemies and a long fall, was a nice touch for the second and third fights. The last two fights could have been handled better. Our party two-shotted most of the enemies in the fourth fight, and overwhelmed the boss with action advantage. Combining the two fights into one would have helped to mitigate this. Revealing that the "demon" living up in the monastery was something...entirely different in the opening text was also, I think, a mistake. The monastery encounters might have gone very differently if we were prepared for something other than what we found. As it was, we had three near-deaths: my wizard, the under-leveled magus, and the summoner's eidolon.

There wasn't much roleplaying between PCs and NPCs to be had. Our GM had the guides stay behind at the base camp without much discussion on the subject, though to be fair we got the map and we probably would have been fine with letting them stay. It didn't help that none of us could speak Tien. But that left the monsters as the only creatures with which we could interact until the denoument, and they weren't interested in talking. Having to protect the guides might have added wrinkles to the not-very-challenging second and third fights, and they could have had interesting things to say about the Two Brothers and the shrines instead of the information being revealed through Knowledge checks.

Overall it was a decent adventure, and to be fair it was more fun in the moment than it is looking back, but it wasn't terribly interesting or flavorful.

Disclaimer - I played the scenario, but haven't read it. In addition, my judge was a veteran player with little DM experience so that may have affected my experience.

For the first PFS module set in Tian Za, there was no local flavor in the entire module. You would think they would try to emphasize the difference between Tian Za and the other regions, but this one could have been set in Cheliax since we didn't get any local color.

The module starts out with 2 1/2 hours of rolling climb checks with two trivial fights included and culminates with hourly fortitude checks to become fatigued or exhausted prior to a horrendous combat. We had one PC death and it should have been at least three. It's possible that our judge misread the climb check rules because I can't concieve of anyone including four encounters worth of climb checks in a module. It did manage to hose the human cavalier in our party (the reason all you see in PFS is halfling cavaliers on dogs), but the judge generously allowed us to haul my medium tiger up numerous cliffs etc.

This is probably the worst PFS module that I played and the only reason it received a second star is because I think a more experienced judge would have thrown out much of the climb check tedium which among other things would have allowed more time at the monastery.

Not much role-playing here. The majority of the adventure is simply traveling through the mountains to your goal, but some interesting locations for battles keeps things interesting.

Ran this for the first time last night for a table of 6 at the low tier. It was a challenging scenario, in part because we had 2 clerics, a positive-channelling oracle, a fire sorcerer, and a fighter. Lots of healing but less damage potential than many groups - and boy, did they need the healing!

There are fun moments to roleplay near the beginning, especially if you ignore the box text intro and actually play out the interview with V-C Amara Li and then the journey with the mountain guides. This doesn't take long, but really gives a chance for roleplaying with some fun characters. Also, this is likely the PC's first time visiting Tien Xia, so there's a chance to set the scene for the rest of the series and really have fun with the new world they're in.

Combats were challenging for a number of reasons - the environmental conditions force a change of tactics that everyone found refreshing. Individual opponents could deal a lot of damage, so it's a good thing the three healers could keep everyone up. We skipped the optional encounter and I think that's best, since the time is better spent at the beginning as indiciated above.

Overall, another great Season 3 scenario, up there with Frostfur Captives.

This is probably the most railroaded scenario I've run so far in PFS. That said, it had a few well-designed encounters (besides some "meh" level ones), and an interesting atmosphere that added a lot to the overall experience.

When reading this scenario, I was thinking to give this 3 stars, but the players really enjoyed it. Looking forward to the next part.

I really hope the other parts give players a chance to roleplay with something other then a chunk of rock