| Jeff de luna |
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This is my first PFS scenario; hopefully it is a winner!
Vic Wertz
Chief Technical Officer
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This month's Pathfinder Society Scenarios have been delayed by a week, and are now scheduled to be released on May 2.
Jeff Erwin
Contributor
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And it's out. I'll check back on this thread periodically if anyone has thoughts or questions for the author. :)
Dezhem
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I'll be playing this tonight, will report back once we're done!How'd it go?
We all managed to survive, heh. That's always a good start. Feedback for the mod from myself and various players:
Mod was played by:
Level 4 Monk
Level 5 Cleric w/ spinosaurus animal companion
Level 4-5 (forget which) Vivisectionist Alchemist (Lots of natural attacks/arms)
Level 4 Sorcerer
- The beginning hook was not received very well. Alright, Aspis Consortium have freely been coming and going via unknown means; sure. But if you're able to teleport directly to the temple via the tapestry, it seems weird that they just wouldn't, I don't know, send Adril Hestram to commando drop in and solo the entire place. I know that's not exactly a unique complaint but several players voiced that. I'm not sure if that was just our GM, but very little emphasis was placed on finding out HOW they were doing it. In fact, one of the faction missions seemed more interested in it.
- The snare trap by the tree was hilarious. Could have used more traps! We ended up making so much noise (and through a ludicrously high Str Alchemist just shunted the tree away), that there was absolutely zero hope of surprising anyone. Despite that, the first encounter went pretty smoothly; Mooks dropped one unconscious (more due to GM rolling well) but were cleaned up pretty quick. Seemed odd since we had made SO much noise that they weren't better prepared.
- The general toughness of the encounters, I felt, and the other players felt, was overall fairly weak. High rolls notwithstanding, I feel that the various bad guys could have easily been bumped up 1-2 levels to provide more of a challenge, at least for Tier 4-5. Having said that, 2 of the PC's were fairly optimized. The tactics of the NPC's could have done with some tweaking too, I think.
- The small environment was both a pro and a con. I hadn't adventured in such a small environment before so that was new to me. It's a nice change from having to travel 5000 miles to get to your mission. However, the small environment also led to some weird situations. Assuming party makes ungodly noise (and combat is pretty loud as is), it feels like all the encounters should have triggered at the same time or something. Weird suspension of disbelief moment there. It also seems like you could almost finish the mod in an hour or less if you have a group that excels at combat.
I hope that's constructive feedback for you! We did enjoy ourselves and spent a lot of time RP'ing our characters, which is a big plus in my book. I think had the temple complex been expanded a bit more and some more traps/exploration element been added it would have been received better overall.
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Jeff Erwin
Contributor
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Interesting.
Actually, it seems like the society had a good team (your party) for the mission, considering... and the way the Aspis people were doing it is in the adventure, too. But the clues discovered in the mission lead to other scenarios which direct the society to the actual Aspis portal.
There are some rationales written in the scenario for when and why people might come running; I don't know if they were implemented effectively, and I may need feedback from a different group to judge.
I don't know how your GM interpreted it, but yes, mistakes like setting off traps or noise are supposed to be part of the challenge.
| The Sorceric-Alchemist |
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This is my first PFS scenario; hopefully it is a winner!
I just ran this module last night and our group went through it in a different way then I expected. Well, we had 8 people and the module was for 4-6 so had to make some adjustments. Now a lot of my friends have said I am a pretty good tactician, and I definately did some prepping, but things didn't work out the way I wanted, but played high tier.
Eric Clingenpeel
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Question SA, was this for PFS? Because 8 player tables are not legal, nor is it legal to make adjustments...
| The Sorceric-Alchemist |
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Question SA, was this for PFS? Because 8 player tables are not legal, nor is it legal to make adjustments...
yes it was for PFS. and...how are 8 player tables not legal if I may ask? That's just...our group. sometimes we only have 4-5, others we have a full house. it just depends.
| The Sorceric-Alchemist |
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Question SA, was this for PFS? Because 8 player tables are not legal, nor is it legal to make adjustments...
and by adjustments, I merely increased the hitpoints. that's all. Otherwise we wouldve finished an an hour. I just made it a bit harder hp wise. is that wrong? I didnt change anything else, just added some hit points.
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Dezhem
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Pasted from the current Guide to Organized Play:
The minimum table size for a Pathfinder Society
Organized Play session to be considered legal is four
PCs. Table size is capped at six PCs. In cases in which
you simply cannot seat four players, you may run a table
of three players, and play an official level-appropriate
pregenerated character in order to meet the minimum
table size of four PCs.
Conversely, if seven players show up to an event,
rather than turning someone away from the campaign
altogether, consider adding a seventh person to the table.
These situations should be extremely rare and should only
be used as a last resort to sending someone home without
the chance to play. Seven-person tables often overpower
otherwise challenging adventures and limit the amount
of time each player gets to shine in the given scenario, and
many players prefer not to play at all rather than play at
such a large table. Check with the players to determine
their preferences before running a seven-person table.
One alternative to a seven-person table is to split the
group into two tables of three players, and ask one of the
players to serve as Game Master for the second table, with
each GM running a pregenerated character to fill her
table out. Under no circumstance should a table ever have
eight or more players.
Consider getting one of your players up and running as a GM, in my opinion. As for changing what's in scenarios; it's frowned upon and the developers have asked people not to do it.
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Mark Moreland
Developer
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Just for clarification, the 7-person table limit and restrictions on modifying mechanics in scenarios only really applies if you're giving out Chronicle sheets for Pathfinder Society credit. If this is just an adventure you ran for your home group but you aren't playing it as part of the Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign, then you can run it however you want. Really, if you only ever play with this same group and you want to use Chronicle sheets to track wealth and advancement, you can use them, but if players then go to conventions or game stores or what-have-you, the assumption is that all the games in which they've played with their PC thus far have been PFS-legal, and altered scenarios or ones that held less than 4 or more than 7 PCs don't qualify as such.
| The Sorceric-Alchemist |
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Ok, let me clear this up. I'm not trying to make a debate about it. I ran this game at my house, and I didnt make changes to the scenario itself. I ran it as it said, we had a large group which consisted of my dad, brother, and his gaming buddies and they went through the module a different way than I was expecting. It's the same group I play with all the time. it was merely a Saturday night game. Point is, I liked the module, I just wished I could've conducted some of the tactics better. That is all. :)
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Eric Clingenpeel
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Whether you ran it in a private home game or a public game at a game store, if you're running it for PFS credit, you need to follow all the guidelines. The scenarios are made for 4-6 characters, so by playing outside those targets things are going to not work. It sounds like you guys are big enough now you could/should split the group. This would allow you to run separate scenarios, or two of you run the same for both groups. Getting too big isn't a bad thing, but trying to squeeze 8 into a scenario made for half that number isn't good for the group in the long run.
| The Sorceric-Alchemist |
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Whether you ran it in a private home game or a public game at a game store, if you're running it for PFS credit, you need to follow all the guidelines. The scenarios are made for 4-6 characters, so by playing outside those targets things are going to not work. It sounds like you guys are big enough now you could/should split the group. This would allow you to run separate scenarios, or two of you run the same for both groups. Getting too big isn't a bad thing, but trying to squeeze 8 into a scenario made for half that number isn't good for the group in the long run.
Fair enough, however this group has always been fairly large for many years. Almost as old as I've been alive if not longer if I recall. between 7-10 people. Now, if we have a 2nd person to run, then yeah we split it into two, however most of the time, noone else if prepared to run said module or whatever type of game we may be playing. It merely depends. most of the time we have 5-7 players due to varying circumstances. Some we have 8, others on the rare occasion we have 9-10 just split into a table of 4 and a table of 3, or 2 tables of 4. =/ It really just depends on circumstances ^^". Plus, we, the Waterdeep Boys Club are quite the eclectic group. We have a blast and there's lots of camaraderie between all of us lol.
| ThorGN |
| Pathfinder Adventure Path, Companion, Modules Subscriber |
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How is it that Isehkta has Improved Natural Attack when she has a +2 BAB and the feat requires a +4 BAB?
