I am not sure how this has yet to be retired. The basic idea is "Beat up an old man, a foreigner, an innocent man, and another guy to find a bunch of stupid statues."

I understand this introduces Torch and he is a plot device through many mods but this thing is just terrible. Please do players and GMs a favor and file this one away.

I suggest people who have any illusions that PFS is a place where heroic characters are welcome avoid this module. There are some interesting fights and some potentially fun role-playing opportunities but the bulk of this module is pure thuggery.

The premise of this module is certainly not a problem. However, the execution is poor.

The first area leaves much to be desired, with a scene that has players wanting to roll initiative and the DM intended to hand wave it away. If players have encountered Grandmaster Torch at all in PFS prior to this module, good old GT is easily put back into his role of the elite information broker.

The problems start when the players start looking around for their targets. Three potential combats can occur without any maps for the encounters in the module, two of which must occur and are in rather large buildings that a GM has to craft with care. The encounters involve extremely annoying combinations of mechanics for players to deal with. Players WILL get frustrated at your table.

The faction missions, specifically the Taldor and Qadira missions, break PFS rules. Poison is specifically not allowed in PFS. Why is it showing up in a faction mission? The Taldor mission can easily directly violate the terms on which the pathfinders even tolerate the existance of the shadow war for Absalom.

This module is not fun to run as a GM. It is a logistics nightmare, a roleplaying nightmare, and requires a large amount of preparation to run in any method that most players I've ever GM'ed for would find acceptable.

Mr. Frost, if you're looking to retire some more season 0 mods, start here.

My players and myself enjoyed the faction missions.
We also liked Grandmaster Torch's reappearance. But the adventure itself is rather bland.
It's great flavor-wise, but the adventure in itself is not engaging.
Solid average.

I disliked this scenario at first, but after running it a few times I am willing to write a review with a fair mind. To begin with, players hate being railroaded—and they are taken for a ride in this scenario. I always apologize to the players when this happens, and I explain that certain things need to happen in order to play out the rest of the encounter. Everyone wants to kill Grandmaster Torch, he’s just too ripe of a peach for the players not to pick. After they accept that he’s only there for display and can’t be had, the game can proceed. The rest of the scenario the players take out their aggressions on the unsuspecting population of Sedeq. It’s simply ridiculous that they can get away with so much murder, theft and mayhem and never get arrested and punished. I think that’s another negative mark on this scenario. Conventional wisdom says that the Pathfinders should be arrested and the scenario should be over after the second encounter. The absence of consequences leads to many chaotic characters having a blast being naughty, while lawful or good-aligned feel unable to accomplish anything without forsaking their principles. Most of the combats are disappointingly easy and too brief, but there’s one that takes players aback and separates the men from the boys (so to speak). I loved the faction missions simply because they were so atypical of Season 0 and created some controversy. There was good campaign world flavor as well, and the many role-playing opportunities really saved this scenario from being a burden to GM.

This adventure was a surprise packet. I played tier 3-4 and in a party of six we were overpowered in some acts. You do get to fight huge creatures under the correct circumstances.

I rated this low as it did go on a bit and has one too many acts for my liking. The ending is weak and there is the distinct possibility of TPK in this adventure as it traps thinking PCs. I was expecting more out this scenario.

This, I tell you, could have been done so much better I can't even begin to tell. Instead, possibly due to the absurd page limit, the scenario is just another scripted combat encounter after another. They repeat themselves to oblivion, and frustrate the players.

If you are going to run this, come up with something much more interesting. Replace maps, tactics, and add possibilities for diplomatic approaches. That's what this needs, since I doubt your first reaction in an urban environment is to blast everything into smithereens.

Grandmaster Torch was popular when he first showed up, but this adventure seems to use him just to use him again, as he isn't in the same place or situation he was in originally, and can easily be mistaken for the guy that the PCs are suppose to bust.

Faction mission, if taken literally and if the PCs aren't looking for a specific instance to come up, but taking the mission at face value, can cause some PCs to read what they are suppose to do as committing major crimes, which is suppose to be discouraged and potentially treated the same as death.

Same faction mission frames the other PCs for the chaos caused and as agents of a foreign power, which seems to go against the "don't work against the other PCs" spirit, even if they don't immediately suffer consequences.

Finally, there is a bit of a lack of challenge in many of the encounters in the scenario.

The overall plot was good and the story was interesting. But..
Spoiler alert
Encounter 4 is WAY too easy for the bad guy to get away. Properly run, there is no way he is not, unless the players are a little suicidal. As a DM I had to slow down the bad guy in the interest of fairness. Also if a person has a pathological aversion to something, give them ways to avoid it once it happens (without giving something away)

The final fight was the most interesting, but one of my players (the min-max guy) didn't like being robbed of his players role. I thought it was great, but it is a proper warning for a player.

The upside is that the faction goals were not too easy and they were fun. The factions are making the game more interesting and the best selling point.
Overall it would be nice to see an enemy's armor classes be a tad bit higher. Men in light armor with 10 dexterity are appearing too often, esp. for 2nd level.
A low level spell caster once in awhile would be great. We prefer human opponents to monsters as a group, but we hope that that they are more than yet another warrior.
The use of terrain in this mod to challenge players is great and should be used more often.
Overall a good module.