A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 5-9.
Followers of the evil elemental lord of air Hshurha have learned of the Pathfinder Society's plans to break open the Untouchable Opal and release Hshurha's ancient rival. One of Hshurha's lieutenants is gathering forces to deal a decisive blow to the Society and its new allies in the Concordance of Elements. If the PCs act quickly, they can make a daring strike, commandeering an airship on the Plane of Air and overtaking their enemy's fortress before it has the chance to rally its army.
Content in Raid on the Cloudborne Keep also contributes directly to the ongoing storyline of the Silver Crusade faction.
This is a pretty funny and straightforward Scenario. There are skill checks involved and two fights can be avoided with wits and skills. This one has been demonized as too hard but with all the available archetypes and classes at the end of Pathfinder First Edition this has aged well.
The maps are cool, the enemies are interesting and the setting is unique.
My only complain is that the Faction Mission is easy to miss because it's only revealed by the same skill check several times. A handout or something obvious in the biefring would have been better.
As a GM that has run 12-15 scenarios, I can say that some of the enemy tactics are bordering on the complicated tactics of those scenarios. That combined with player choices that not only punish players but tells them to bend over just completely ruins the experience.
The CR's are insane for the level range, along with tactics that are for more advanced characters for the level range more like 7-11 then for the 5-9. It has been a stressful amount of breaths of life's to keep alive
Almost nothing but stall tactics and badly designed fights that cause nothing but frustration to the players. Flyby attacks. Constant cover. Obscuring mists. Negative effects on PC crits. Etc. It's just a poorly designed set of frustrating battles. 4 breaths of life later, and we were STILL struggling on that second combat.
My interplanar real estate agent Gnome mesmerist ended up playing this scenario after a bunch of other planar adventures. It's nice to continue a certain theme with the same character. This scenario brought her back to the Plane of Air, a place she enjoyed visiting earlier despite her small size. Bringing with her a certain horn and a bag of tricks, she set out to accomplish the task at hand: stopping an evil villain.
Let me emphasize that again: evil villain. This NPC is probably the most foul and evil boss I've yet encountered in PFS. Think of something evil and he's probably done it. He literally is an opponent I'd coup de grace every single time just because of what he's done and threatens to continue to do. The author did an exceptional job at making an actual evil bad guy that shows no signs of remorse and who does not deserve any redemption.
The rest of the scenario is a nice mixture of infiltration and fights. While you could just go about being murderhobo's, the social route is also worth exploring. Because of all the boons my mesmerist has accumulated and all the guaranteed assists, we struggled little to talk our way through some encounters. No one complained though, it's always fun if you don't have to kill or defeat everything in sight.
The fights were potentially scary. Luckily for us we were lucky with out spell-selection and with the bad saves the GM rolled for the boss. The boss is less scary when stuck in an orb and blinded for three rounds straight. We lucked out on that one, as the GM mentioned what the monster would have done had that not been the case. We would not have been amused.
In short it's a great dungeoncrawl with some roleplaying solutions along the way should the party decide to try so. The combats can be nasty if unprepared, but I think it's in a good spot. It's not my favorite scenario this season, but it's fairly decent. If you've already played some of the other elemental scenarios, you should give this one a shot. If not, wait until you've at least played the three-parter.
Please let us know which flip-mat(s)/map pack(s) this scenario uses.
Scheduled to GM this at Gen Con, and trying to start my pre-combat checks early.
Thanks.
Would it be too much to ask which side of the flipmat?:
I mean, the one from Planar Multipack is pretty obvious, but what about the Airship? Asking because I plan on making 3D terrain for both the Airship and the Castle. I was hoping to get a jump on it early!
Pathfinder Society Lead Developer
