Pathfinder Society Scenario #15: The Asmodeus Mirage (OGL) PDF Paizo Publishing, LLC
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Appearing only once a century in the western deserts of Katapesh, the Asmodeus Mirage has plagued Golarion for thousands of years. Powered by a crystal bone devil skeleton and legendary for trapping unwary travelers, the Society has a vested interest in studying and cataloging the source of its power. You have been sent deep into the deserts of northern Garund to enter the Mirage—but there's a catch! The Mirage only exists on Golarion for 24 hours every 100 years. Get trapped in the Mirage, and you may never see Golarion again.
Written by Christopher Self
This product is a Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 1st to 7th level characters (Tiers: 1–2, 3–4, and 6–7). 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 3.5 edition of the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game.
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Just Shoot Me
Reviewer:
Doug Miles Mon, Oct 12, 2009, 03:36 PM
Apologies to Christopher Self. This is the worst PFS scenario I’ve played. It makes almost no sense. The encounters are a pushover at the low tier and rapidly ramp up at the higher tiers. Opportunities for interesting environmental effects in the desert are missed. It encompasses too many combats to come near to finishing in four hours. Creatures with immunities like hardness, DR and fast healing cause almost every fight to drag on and eat up precious time. There’s no plot, there’s very little role-play and it amounts to the same thing in the end. I played this and then ran it once and I don’t look forward to doing it again. The maps were very hard to draw because there were scant guidelines given. Campaign world flavor was absent, this could have been set in any campaign. Faction missions were forgettable. The only positive thing I can say is that the author’s next submission has to be an improvement over The Asmodeus Mirage.
Deserting adventuring at its finest
Reviewer:
Masika Sun, Sep 20, 2009, 05:03 AM
I played this adventure at tier 3-4 with my 4th level ranger. It perfectly suited my dunewalker character as well as my spell selection. :)
I actually picked this adventure as a filler to end my GenconOz 2009 experience but I was really surprised. There is a real threat that the party will be trapped in the mirage. The hot sun and heat does strange things to travellers and it is hard to believe that you can finish this adventure with a tribe of lost gnolls as your prize.
The travelling is very confusing but is designed to be as it is part of the challenge. This is not a good adventures for inexperienced players and demands respect... it has a dragon in it. :)
Interesting but needs tweaking
Reviewer:
Mirliton Mon, Aug 10, 2009, 06:34 AM
I ran this module at lev. 3-4. The concept is very interesting in this module, and it caused a good bit of tension for the players. There seem to be some unbalanced aspects and encounters that are out of place or are not fully developed, and the rewards do not add up. This can confuse the players. As long as you read the module ahead of time and have a good feel for the concept, you can flesh out missing pieces when presenting it to the players to keep them from being confused. This was more difficult for the players than many lev. 4-5 modules, and it took more time to prepare, but the whole idea was very interesting to run and to play. We had a good time with it.
Confusing and badly designed
Reviewer:
CLBeilby Wed, Jul 1, 2009, 09:04 PM
I ran this scenario at a con recently. As a Judge, my opinion is that the module is written poorly, the encounters (at all tiers) are poorly balanced, and the designer failed to put in a mechanism for the random nature of the adventure. Ultimately, because of the very randomness, the adventure becomes repetitive and un-enjoyable.
Could have been better
Reviewer:
Deussu Wed, Apr 1, 2009, 03:42 AM
Asmodeus Mirage gives a nice setting, reminds me of the Dune trilogy. The premise, as always, bodes well and keeps going good until you get to the mirage itself. It has a needless minigame attached to it, and the most random encounters yet to be seen in an adventure.
For the DM at some times it seems hard to understand what the motives of the monsters are. And frankly they seem to go the "he/she/it is just mad" line. With slight modifying and more reasoning with less odd encounters this can be made a whole lot better. In its current form it's a pile of random encounters.
The module has some minor problems with certain combatants being mis-placed. Nothing serious but may leave the players scratching their heads wondering if they missed something.
Spoiler:
A bear? Seriously? ...in the middle of a desert and trapped in the a dragon's lair for like what... 100 years? How did he survive in the blistering heat with the confusing desert terrain and only bugs to eat? And then end up in a room with the doors shut. On top of that, it's a POLAR bear! (Or dire bear depending on level) With all due respect to the author, the encounter is a little silly as written -- how does a polar bear get into a desert mirage that only opens once every 100 years?
For potential DM's, my advice is to replace the polar bear with an displacer beast that is an escaped pet from the Gnoll camp and call it a day. Yes, Displacer Beast's natural climate is temperate hills so technically he doesn't belong either, but the Gnolls kept him in a cave to guard mushrooms. He escaped a few days ago, wandered in the desert before coming here to rest and he attacks the PCs on sight because he's starving.
It's a tactically interesting combat (and same CR as the polar bear) which makes a tiny bit more sense than a fur covered, arctic animal in a room with shut doors and no food. At least the Displacer Beast is smart enough to work the doors with his tentacles.
It's important for me to point out 2 things: (1) Displacer beasts aren't open content and (2) Who says the bears were in the mirage for 100 years? The dragon uses his lair to collect menagerie's and since he's old, insane, and bored, he forces people to occasionally clear his menagerie. That could have been spelled out better in the scenario, but I don't think it's silly in the least.
This is so far the only scenario I was disappointed in. The reasoning behind the mission was... confusing at best. There were too many combats. Some of which, at the high tier, were just overpowering. A healthy sense of danger is one thing, knowing the creature is going to kill the entire party is another. It was also hard to follow the sequence of events, which may have been the point. This would have been better if it were a two round scenario.
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