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Pathfinder Society Scenario #12: Stay of Execution (OGL) PDF
Paizo Publishing, LLC
When a petty thief named Hadge gets a lucky break and makes off with a powerful divination focus of the Pathfinder Society's masked leadership, you and your fellow Pathfinders set out to the sparsely populated Taldor frontier to find him and recover the focus. When the local governor tosses Hadge into the brutal Porthmos Prison for a minor crime, your mission suddenly becomes a jail break. Will you free Hadge and uncover the location of the focus before the gangs of Porthmos tear him apart?
Written by Alison McKenzie
This product is a Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 1st to 7th level characters (Tiers: 1–2, 4–5, 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.
Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at
webmaster@paizo.com.
Product Reviews
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This adventure is lacking on so many levels.
It's supposed to be a prison break, but getting in is so easy that everybody should have escaped a long time ago.
The way to get into the dungeon made me chuckle for a split-second. That's it.
The faction missions are boring, the prison break is utterly unconvincing as presented and any DM who wants to run this scenario as intended, has to specifically tell his players NOT to do anything creative and just roll with the choo-choo-train. The map is a nice frame for a homebrew prisonbreak. That's about the only positive thing I have to say about this adventure.
We finished this in 2 hours. I ran this another time and completely rewrote the plot leaving only the combats untouched. This piece is so unfinished I won't even finish my own revi
I've run this multiple times. Every time people have had a lot of fun with it, and its worked pretty well. That having been said, it takes a little "herding" on the GMs part to keep this from being an open ended nightmare, since there is a lot of potential for going off and a time sinking tangent that the GM will have to rule completely on the fly.
Still, given that it didn't take too much prodding to keep the groups I ran on track, I would say that means the adventure is compelling enough to keep people wanting to do what they are suppose to do and have fun doing it.
There’s a fun premise here, the jailbreak scenario. It allows the role-players at the table to really shine. Problem-solvers also have a lot of potential to enjoy themselves, planning for both breaking into, then breaking out of a prison. But the scenario doesn’t deliver. It must have been assumed that players are too hapless or dull to figure out and implement their own plan. The scenario hands the GM a script with no supporting details to allow for anything but the linear progression of acts as written. Again, the limit on page count and maps made this a difficult scenario to run. Hey Paizo, I'd pay $8 a scenario if you could give me a few more pages and another map or two, seriously! On the positive side, the players love the prison atmosphere and their role-play overshadowed any feelings of disappointment. The faction missions were interesting although some were too easy and some were improbable. The fights were not challenging enough however. It seems like the editor doesn’t want to start an arms race by ‘optimizing’ the bad guys to the fullest extent of the EL. In summary, I think this scenario would have been better served by providing more information about the prison and offering several routes by which it could be accessed.
The story is interesting and fun, the combat challenges fairly straight forward, and although the role-playing elements are moderately low they are very interesting and bring a unique personality to the game. It's a good module, if a bit average.
My chief disappointment in the module lies in some of the faction goals which frankly come across as hastily tacked on to meet a publisher's requirement. They aren't ludicrous or implausible but they don't feel terribly relevant to the faction or the story.
What I loved about Mists of Mwangi is that the faction goals each had a mini-story that was revealed as the players accomplished them. The mini-stories tied directly to the main plot building atmosphere as well as rewarding the players for their efforts. The flavor of the factions was also supported by the task being performed.
I think Paizo should strongly discourage "scavenger hunt" & "mail delivery" faction goals. Any DM could make up some random object and insert it into the story in some obscure location as a faction goal, but how does that develop the flavor of the faction let alone elaborate on the story being told? Message delivery is marginally better because it encourages role-playing but used too much and the PCs will simply start telling the pertinent NPC "you dropped this", hand over the message and walk away. How boring is that.
Don't let my diatribe on faction goals discourage potential players or DMs. The faction quests are a small part of an otherwise strong scenario.
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Now available!
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What is the setting? Urban in a frontier city? Is it adaptable to pretty much any town?
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The setting is a prison on the edge of the wilderness but near a small town. You could pick Porthmos Prison up and drop it into any relatively corrupt city, though.
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Go go go Alison !
*clap* *clap* *clap*
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Sounds like a whole lot of fun.
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PZOPSS0012E
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