A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 7–11.
Following its efforts to set up a base camp in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, the Pathfinder Society seemed ready to mobilize its forces when Marcos Farabellus received troubling news: something dire had befallen the camp. What’s worse, these events resulted in the disappearance of one of the Society’s most valuable tools as well as two of its esteemed leaders. The PCs must investigate the ruined camp, track down the perpetrators, and recover a powerful relic to prevent this tragedy from ruining the entire expedition.
Content in “The Sealed Gate” also contributes directly to the ongoing storylines of the Grand Lodge and Silver Crusade factions.
Written by Kyle Baird.
This scenario is designed for play in Pathfinder Society Organized Play, but can easily be adapted for use with any world. This scenario is compliant with the Open Game License (OGL) and is suitable for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.
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Before we get started, I should get something out of the way. I play optimized characters. I know not every player likes to dish out lots of damage or cast the most powerful spells, but I am a huge supporter of deadly scenarios and incredible challenge. Honestly, this scenario might not deserve a five star rating, but it sure as heck a better rating than 2 stars.
To put it simply, this is a really, really, really hard scenario. Anyone going into this game should be prepared to lose their character, or at least be on the edge of their seat for every minute of the 4-hour time slot. To give you some background, I had been wanting to play this scenario ever since my friend (Who GMed this) told me it was basically a 7-11 that was worse than Bonekeep. Our party was made up of a Demon-Hunting Ranger, 2 Druids, a Barbarian, and a Summoner (Unchained. You can see that we were well prepared to deal with anything that came our way. We were not.
SOME SPOILERS AHEAD
The opening fight almost ended us. My Ranger managed to save us in the first round, but the whole rest of the fight was really intense. We almost TPKed several times over the course of the 10 rounds it took us to end it, and we had to take a break after to catch our breath and calm down. I loved this, and the other players were just as excited as I was. The rest of the encounters were not as bad as the first, but the last fight can also be brutal if you are not prepared.
Honestly, this scenario is not for the faint of heart, or for those who prefer not to optimize. Maybe it should have a deadliness warning? All in all, this was a fantastic scenario with great writing, a cool backstory, and one of the best challenges I have ever come up against in my 3 year society career.
If you enjoy actually playing in PFS scenarios, don't become involved in this one because there is a good chance you won't get to play your character at all. It would have been a more efficient use of time, and probably more fun too, if the scenario simply asked each character at the beginning to roll 30 saving throws, making 27 of which would give full reward and not making 27 of which would result in character death. At least the players could then go to the pub for the next four hours and enjoy themselves.
How this scenario is not banned from PFS eludes me
This appears to be a scenario written to annihilate any party other than a fully optimized party that spends lavishly on items that would never be used in any other scenario. Note, not just kill the PCs but annihilate and reduce them to unresurrectable characters without items.
As I read the reviews, I can see that parties which spent lavishly and selected niche magic items (at this level they are indeed niche) to counter a very specific threat were able to defeat the first encounter with luck. Normal parties have no chance given the sheer number of saving throws every round. Especially if you are playing hard mode which has a good chance of killing a PC a round. It is not a question of tactics but rather if you make the saves since missing almost any 1 save will make you NPC chow.
I played in the 7-8 tier with 4 players and there it is basically a toss up whether you will face a CR 13 or only a CR 11 encounter right off the bat
This scenario left such a foul taste in my mouth that I actually wrote a review
Our first encounter took over 3 1/2 hours. We were lucky that only one person died. Every time we turned around, multiple terrible things that are hard to avoid and expensive/hard to cure were happening to us.
The constant feeling of "how am I effed this round?" really sucked the fun out of the first encounter. By the end of it, I wanted to go home (the guy who died, even though we rezzed him, DID go home). After debate on whether to continue, we resolved to do the next two encounters (which the GM said would be lighter and quicker) but decided to run at the outset of the boss fight (since the first encounter made finishing on time, before the game store closed, impossible).
Also, I don't know if the GM simply missed it, or Kyle forgot to write it in, but while there were specific locations for the first and third portal stones (can't remember exactly what they were called), there was no mention where to find the second portal stone. GM had to make it up. Really bad to not have all the mission mcguffins in the scenario.
As a final note, objectively, I'm not sure if this is a good scenario or not. Subjectively, it wasn't fun at all. Definitely not Kyle's best work.
I ran this over the weekend, and the reactions were very mixed.
As others have reported, several parts of this scenario were very challenging, even before adding in hard mode. However, they were challenging in ways that basically just annoyed most of the party. The challenges essentially prevented several characters from participating in much of the scenario. The challenge level was also quite uneven - half of the encounters were close to a TPK for our group, and the other half were a walk in the park. On the upside, at least one of my players was on the edge of his seat for most of one of the difficult encounters. This was actually good to see.
The length of the scenario, like many other higher-level scenarios, is also towards the top end of the scale. I neglected to cut out the optional encounter, and my group finished in about 5 and a half hours.
They can't explore Jormurdun until they lead their army from this base of operations to its gates. Then they have to actually gain entry into the chambers within. One step at a time!
There are some extraneous words in the blurb, which I have bolded below (IMO they should be removed).
Scenario Blurb wrote:
Following its efforts to set up a basecamp in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, the Pathfinder Society seemed ready to mobilize its forces when the Marcos Farabellus received troubling news: something dire had befallen the camp. What’s worse, these events resulted in the disappearance of one of the Society’s most valuable tools and the disappearance of two of its esteemed leaders. The PCs must investigate the ruined camp, track down the perpetrators, and recover a powerful relic to prevent this tragedy from ruining the entire expedition.
Base camp is not a compound word, it is two separate words. It sounds like the original draft read, "the Pathfinder Society received troubling news..." and 'Pathfinder Society' was replaced with 'Marcos Farabellus' without removing 'the'. You could also change "and two of its esteemed leaders" to "as well as two of its esteemed leaders".
So it should read:
Following its efforts to set up a base camp in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, the Pathfinder Society seemed ready to mobilize its forces when Marcos Farabellus received troubling news: something dire had befallen the camp. What’s worse, these events resulted in the disappearance of one of the Society’s most valuable tools as well as two of its esteemed leaders. The PCs must investigate the ruined camp, track down the perpetrators, and recover a powerful relic to prevent this tragedy from ruining the entire expedition.
Ack! Just noticed the release has been pushed back from Wednesday to Friday...
Say I was scheduled to run this on Sunday...should I inform the event coordinator that we'll need a different scenario, or do you think the Friday release date will stand?
(and I'll hope that Kyle's writing is clear enough that I can figure it out and prep it in a 24 hour time span) :P
Running this in three and a half weeks. Can't wait to add some more notches to my GM screen. I'll send a portion of player tears as tribute to Baird the following Monday.
I'm kind of disappointed in the writing for this one, as I've seen some glaring plot holes that make no sense.
1.) They clearly remind players that when you enter the Tapestry, that you leave a planar eddie where you came in. It states to the players that all they need to do is enter that eddie and they leave the Tapestry and return to the material plane at the spot where they entered. So, if Zay and Li entered the tapestry, how can they not exit via their own planar eddies? There is no explanation for this, and it is clearly in odds with what they remind the players so that they, and the other pathfinders, can leave the Tapestry.
2.) Even more disturbing is the horrible way that Nikolai is presented. It is claimed in several places that he had fallen under the influence of the Alraune. For most of the scenario I assumed that this meant that it had some power over him that was manipulating his mind and making him more pliable. Having seen both stat blocks, the only thing I can see is the Charm Monster power, and having seen Nikolai's stat block, there is virtually no way that he would have failed the Will save to fall under its effect. So either the Alraune is great at mental manipulation, and therefore didn't need the spell like ability to control the venture captain, or Nikolai is just that pliable and arrogant that he easily fell under the manipulations of the creature because of his own arrogance. Either way, the whole thing makes no sense, and given that it is the entire driving premise of the scenario, it makes the whole thing tenuous at best.
1.) They clearly remind players that when you enter the Tapestry, that you leave a planar eddie where you came in. It states to the players that all they need to do is enter that eddie and they leave the Tapestry and return to the material plane at the spot where they entered. So, if Zay and Li entered the tapestry, how can they not exit via their own planar eddies? There is no explanation for this, and it is clearly in odds with what they remind the players so that they, and the other pathfinders, can leave the Tapestry.
In Response:
The issue that those two ran into was that their connection was disrupted when the tapestry moved (in addition to the disruption of the arcane foci stabilizing the portal they were creating). Thus far the Society's travels into the tapestry have involved the artifact staying on one place the whole time. When the alraune carried off the tapestry, it appears it made Zey's and Li's respective eddies disappear or be disrupted.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8
