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My detailed review. Warning, spoilers abound!
Adventure Background and Overall Plot:
Venture Capain Thurl - What's not to love about a one-eyed, tattoo covered, heavily pierced Dwarven Venture Captain?
The main plot is centered around a purportedly crazy oracle and her prophecies from 500 years ago. Dismissed by her contemperaries, and long forgotten by today's scholars, a small piece of her prophecy has turned up and *gasp* it fortells recent events. While cliche, I really love the background of the oracle and the writing of the prophecy itself. In the hands of an engaged player, I get a great deal of enjoyment of their reaction to the "tower that reaches the Sky shall fall to the Shadow."
At the heart of the scenario, it is another "go fetch the macguffin." While arguably overdone in PFS, it IS a core to the Pathfinder organization.
4 Stars
Act I
1. Chaos Manifest
I hate, hate, hate, hate having to learn environmental effects and then teach them to unsuspecting players.
That said, I'm lazy, and now that I've run it twice, I find it very easy to run the encounter and very dramatic. BOTH times I've run this, I've got two PCs with the Tornado.
4 Stars
2. Shelter from the Storm
There's an Eagle Knight stuck out here in the middle of the Worldwound? Yeah right. While it's nearly impossible to make the players believe she's legit, it's impossible to convince the characters for more than a few rounds of discussion. With the remains of the real Eagle Knight virtually in plain view, the ruse doesn't last long.
That's really too bad because the Night Hag's best abilities come when PCs are asleep.
2 Stars
Act 2
S1. Outside
Why the difference in demon tactics? I have a hard time believing a Glabrezu is going play with its veil ability as the tactics describe. This is especially annoying since the PCs just came from a shapechanger combat... bad author, bad!
Here's how I'd run the Glabrezu if I was going to alter its tactics (which I'd never do...)
The PCs are approaching the Safehouse cautiously. Have someone succeed at a perception check to hear movement inside. Put them in initiative. When they advance on the house, have the Glabrezu teleport in next to the PC farther from the house. He can't attack right away and it gives the PC's a chance to catch their bearings.
I've only run this at 10-11, so I can't speak for the pair of Nabasu, but the Glabrezu is a TOUGH fight for PCs, especially those not familiar with demonic tactics.
Reverse Gravity? Awesome. Pincer, Pincer, Claw, Claw, Rend, Bite? Deadly. Not able to fly? Great opening for prepared PCs. This is a great fight for the tier. It's challenging without being overly complex via terrain or environment.
That said, both times, the players made a break for the house, believing whatever was in the house had to be better than this beast.
4.5 Stars (-.5 for Glabrezu Tactics)
S2. Sitting Room
I have trouble properly reviewing this encounter. The both times I ran it, the Glabrezu got brought to this fight. Both time the Glabrezu decimated these guys.
If I had run it, I'd say the quarters are a little cramped for the NPCs to be truly effective, but without ever running it as written, it's tough to say. I'm waiting for the day I get to sneak attack someone with a Tengu rogue wielding a greatsword, or I successfully sunder someone's adamantine full plate with a lucerne hammer.
X Stars (probably 3.5 to 4.5 depending on PC mix)
Act 3
1. The Scorpion Nest
A gargantuan scorpion? Can Paizo please make a mini for this? LOL.
I've never had the chance to run this optional encounter, but it could range from boring to fun depending on party mix and the GM's intrepretation of the environment. Are the PCs still climbing out of the hole when the scorpion strikes? Are there any other environmental issues to worry about (wind, ash, etc). Is the hole they're coming out of vertical or sloped?
For an optional encounter it's decent. It fits the locale and them of the scenario and should add an extra 30 minutes to the table.
X Stars (Probably 3.5, but optional encounters are rarely that well written)
2. Caggrigar Caught
Getting to this point the PCs have survived the following:
A Tornado
Night Hag
Glabrezu
Three well built NPCs
A Gargantuan Emperor Scorpion
Now they are presented with the following encounter:
Creatures: Regardless of their method of travel or means of tracking Caggrigar, the PCs finally catch up with their quarry less than 2 miles north of the tunnel’s mouth. There is no cover granted for either PCs or Caggrigar, and both parties are likely aware of each other from the moment the PCs first come within range of him, though GMs should be prepared to adapt the encounter to clever solutions by the players. Caggrigar has gone to no trouble to hide his path, figuring his companions would eventually come after him, angered that he abandoned them with the very treasure they came for. If the PCs are visible and not disguised as his companions, the Shadow Lodge agent immediately recognizes that the PCs are not his fellow adventurers, and he begins preparing for a confrontation as indicated in the tactics section of his stat block.
To me this means that the PCs are likely to discover a single person walking in a barren wasteland from thousands of feet away.
The absolute worst encounter design that can be done is a single NPC vs. the entire party of PCs with thousands of feet in between them. The economy of actions will win every time.
Caggrigar is an unique, interesting, and well built NPC. I wish the encounter was written in a way that the PCs could observe him at close range or be forced to interact with him.
Could I force the PCs to star close like the map in the scenario? Yes. Would I ever? No.
2 Stars.
Faction Missions
The Chelaxian mission where they have to leave the Asmodeus holy symbol on the corpse of a demon can be very difficult since the demon tactics are to teleport away when below X number of hit points.
I like the Taldor mission to have words with the Ulfen deserter. Like the missions in City of Strangers, I find the players enjoy missions where they get to pass along secret messages, especially when they're intimidating in nature.
The rest of the missions involve a few checks and are pretty straight forward.
3.5 Stars
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So lets see, I agree mostly with Mr. Baird.
Act I
Enviromental. I am on the fence about this one. I don't like all the mechanics. I would say 70% of my prep was going over all the enviromental aspects. I also had a problem with the Tornado. For instance when a player gets sucked into the funnel cloud, what would be the fall damage.
Dust storm as well, visibility reduced to a quarter, to stream line this effect, I implemented a 30'ft vision.
Suffocation and quicksand fun as always.
I hope to see more scenario's with hazards such as these perhaps not all at once.
Sheltor, I had one pc go into the sheltor while the rest of the party was on their way. Later a paly came and and used detect evil and started combat. As a GM, if I ran this mod again, I would try to force the combat outside. The hag, had zero effect in tight conditions.
Glaberazu, again paly detect evil, as well as monster tactics ruined this fight, dimensional anchor was especially anti outsider. Smite evil can be very damaging.
Sitting Room, Now this was a good encounter I would give it 5 stars. The Npc's were well built. I had the npc's sit inside covering door as the PC's approached buffed up and hold actions. Sneak attack got a Pc on approach, a failed snipe followed a fireball on the next action, evasion yeilded zero damage.
Caster PC opened door got a face full of sunder, as well a save against dominate person. Pc's enter Cleric AC38 holy vindicator rushes gets another face full of Sunder breaking tower sheild and plate broke next round....
When I dm'd this, the pc's were hesitant about killing pathfinders. This was were the goodness of the mod was for my group. Carrigar should of made his stand here.
Good mod, personally I think page count was a bit high and leaves time running short. I would stream act one together, and offer PC's to RP, the Sitting room encounter. Scorpian encounter, While I really like these this mod is hard on time how it is. With added page count this could of been two mods. Grats to the author.
Plot wise I liked it,
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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If I had seen this earlier, I would have tried to help on the witch Amanda. Anyways, I'm running it now. My players just hit levels 7 and 8, and they all want to play up. In some ways, I wish I could let them. I'd finally have baddies with a chance of hitting them. On the other hand, they'd probably all die. My party typically has an AC of at least 30, and speciallizes in sundering and making baddies prone. Luckily, the character who just makes everyone run away won't be there.
So, my thoughts from before-hand
Environmental. Well, one of them at least has boots for tremorsense. That should help with the gysers and quicksand. My first thought was it didn't look like that big of a thing to run around the quicksand to the shelter, but now I see that's a 10' scale, not a 5'. Maybe I'll at least hit something with the environment then.
Hag. The party probably won't care about her disguise, and will see through it pretty quick anyways. As she'll rarely be able to hit their AC and doesn't have room to keep away from them, I expect things to be over pretty quick.
Nabasu. If their tactics actually used the Deeper Darkness, they might do well. See what I can do with the gaze at least. Should I be assuming they are flying the whole time?
Agents. At high tier, they stood a chance. At low tier, they're speed bumbs. Particularly annoying is the sunder-specialist. My party has their own sunderer, and I was looking forward to pitting them against each other. But Embla's to-hit is too low, and she'll be staggered the whole fight because we have Taldorans in the party. Actually, is there any reason she'd give her real name when she knows the real pathfinders are looking for her? Could I give them a fake name, then have her real one come up during the fight?
Why'd they bother describing the rest of the house? It's empty, no-one will care about it.
Scorpion isn't going to hit them. Just smack it until it dies. High tier would actually hit half the time, but oh well.
Caggrigar - I like the smite/vampiric touch combo. There's no way they'll let him surrender though.
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I'm running this scenario today. The question I have is with the night hag. According to the bestiary she can only target evil or chaotic characters. That greatly limits who she can target. And, as one of my venture officers pointed out, she already used this on a crusader so she didn't follow her own rules anyway. Thoughts on this?
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Am I correct in thinking that Protection from Evil does not keep Demons in the Worldwound from attacking with natural weapons since they are not "summoned?" It should still grant the deflection bonus, but not the "prevents bodily contact" part, correct?
Also, Dismissal should still work, since it targets one extraplanar creature, and despite not being summoned, they are still Outsiders without the native subtype, yes?
I expect to run this in the near future at 10-11, and I know the group will at least have Protection from Evil, and there's a good chance the cleric will have at least one dismissal. I imagine these questions will be relevant to season 5, and they may even be addressed in one of the season 5 scenarios, but I'm avoiding reading any of those until I've had a chance to play them.
Venture-Agent, Ireland–Drogheda
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I ran this the other day and it will be the last society game I ever GM.
In the first encounter, the bard at the table had a +20 something to his sense motive so he sussed out her lies immediately. A brief combat followed, in which the gunslinger one-shot the 130 hp nighthag.
The Glabrezu encounter went much the same, except that I had him take a surprise round to use power word stun on the gunslinger. Of course, the gunslinger had some kind of gadget that made him immune to stun, so I wasted the only action I was to get. The mage had his familiar use a wand of haste, the inquisitor baned evil outsider, raged, power attacked and lunged to do 116 pts of damage while also avoiding even a single AoO. The gunslinger promptly ended the combat.
I pushed them through the shadow lodge encounter, because really, what a complete waste of time that would have been. The inquisitor used the spell that gives him a +30 to perception checks so I just read off the loot in the basement while I started filling out the chronicle sheets. Feeling my PFS career coming to a frustrating end, and hoping to salvage something of the evening, I skipped the scorpion encounter.
The boss had just enough time to summon 3 babaus before the wizard d-doored the gunslinger and inquisitor into close proximity with Caggrigar. The gunslinger promptly did 20d8 damage to him, and I was forced to spend two rounds rolling the babaus' d6+5 damage while the gunslinger reloaded
Pathfinder Society is broken.
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Well, PFS is in a stage of "maturity" right now (year 5), and there has been a lot of supplement power creep; the same thing happened with Living Greyhawk (3.5) around year 5 or so.
As for the gunslinger, a couple of things:
First, the glabrezu has knowledge(local) +18 - it's worth giving it a roll to see what he might know about the Pathfinders, and to act accordingly.
Second, I'm *guessing* he argued that his clear-spindle-slotted wayfinder makes him immune to stun (it's a compulsion), which is not accurate - it only wards against ongoing control (like dominate).
Avoiding the AoO I'm guessing was courtesy of the "Grace" spell (or whatever it's called, for avoiding AoOs) - I don't recall the particulars of the spell offhand but it's worth reviewing the particulars, especially whether it's subject to SR (I'm just too busy to look it up).
It is a far, far easier scenario than it used to be. The Night Hag encounter has never worked (every party detects evil); why sneaky beings such as Night Hags don't have nondetection as a spell-like ability, I'll never know (they do in my home campaign; succubi too.)
You *can* get the drop on a party with a glabrezu if it's veiled (I like a huge tree, and I just draw several on the map), so long as no one is running true seeing or the like - it can set things up (reverse gravity, stun, etc) with SLAs before revealing itself, so it can gain a tactical advantage. As soon as they can get to it, though, there's no way it's lasting long.
I suppose one could complicate the encounter further by having the NPCs in the house get involved just as the battle with the glabrezu makes the PCs vulnerable.
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That's an option, but it can be hard in the big soup of players and GMs which is PFS (especially in convention settings).
Although my sorceress is pretty nasty, I actually did go through the retirement arc with a highly non-optimized party, and while at times frustrating, it was probably a lot more memorable and fun than it would have been otherwise (it took us 50 hours of play time to get through it).
On the other hand, I played through Siege of the Diamond City (lvl 14-15) with the most cracked-out group imaginable, and we just steamrolled it (typically dishing out 1000+ hp damage per round as a party, with single characters at times scoring full attacks for north of 500 damage), pretty much reducing even the most "difficult" encounters to 1 or 2 rounds of combat. It was FUN, but it was certainly not challenging at all (and of course "fun" and "challenging" ARE two different, and not necessarily parallel, aspects of gaming).
It's a pretty old problem with organized play - do you write for the optimizers? for the average player? for the newbie? There's no way to provide a consistent and reasonable challenge across the board at this point.
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Can someone give a round-by-round summary of how the environmental effects are supposed to work? There's so much happening in that encounter that I'm a bit thrown off, and the GM Shared Prep folder only has summaries of each effect (and not a great summary - just shortcuts to the text).
Every round:
- Ashstorm, ranged attacks impossible, start to drown at the beginning of your turn (I don't think you can hold your breath choking in a duststorm) so make a con check DC 10+1/round and take 1 non lethal damage + 1 lethal fire damage.
- Geyser, roll 1d6 to determine which one. 30ft radius, DC 15 reflex, fireball style randomly rolled energy type. Cover (even weak cover) gives them a +2 bonus on the save.
If moving into Quicksand:
- an active survival DC 15 check (not passive) can be made to look for quicksand as a free action before movement is made to determine if they are about to step into quicksand.
- if stepped in, immediately begin sinking (no check).
- DC 10 swim to stay afloat
- DC 15 swim to move 5 feet
- players can be told to make swim/survival checks, they don't have to work it out.
- Failing by 5 or more means another drowning check straight away.
- Another PC can help them with an item like a 10ft pole, but not with an outstretched hand (even while lying down or similar).
If the tornado gets there:
- it gets there after 2d6 rounds, so the PCs are unlikely to have to deal with it
- if they do, everyone is pulled in for 1d10 rounds, 6d6 damage per round
- amazingly, the rules don't say they can't take actions - it even implies they can take (certain) actions because it specifically says ranged attacks are impossible
- fly checks have a -12 penalty
- Falling damage (how high do you go???)
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So I just got to run this for my VC and a large group and it was definitely one of my favorites to run.
First off, the weather effects were pretty daunting and forcing them into the cave was pretty easy.
I had a problem though with the Glabrezu's tactics. It says he should look a known pathfinder. The problem with this is most parties will be naturally suspicious of such a character. So I changed his tactics and the map a little bit. Put out on a regular blank map sheet the pathfinder trading house and 4 or 5 other building. One was a Gazebo, or in this case, a Glabrezebo. Using its veil ability to look like anything it chose to look like a building.
So that fight starts with, you feel something bad happen, roll initiative. I had pre-rolled will saves so it starts with confusion and the players have no idea where its from. From here hilarity insues.
During the fight, before half the party had seen through the illusion, the Glabrezebo was knocked prone. This had to look very strange to the party who got immediate saves. Only one person made it though.
The party eventually one but it was definitely one of those fights I hope they remember.
How does one determine the Fortitude saving throw's DC for the tornado (CR 10)?
A review of the boards indicates some folks think the rules' reference to a Fortitude save is merely a typo, and the saving throw is actually a Strength check.
Yep. The rules say it's a Fortitude save "as per table 13-10." However, table 13-10 says, "Make a strength check or fly check." Since there is never a number given for the Fortitude save, it's impossible to apply, so even if the Fortitude save is the correct action, you can't use it. So you'd have to fall back to using strength checks or fly checks, as per 13-10.
Of note is that there are actually TWO sections that talk about tornadoes. There is the "Powerful Storms" section starting on page 438, which talks about light sources being put out, and then refers to table 13-10. It alludes to bad things happening if you fail your check, but it doesn't say what those bad things are.
So then you have to look to the very bottom of page 439-440 for an extra paragraph that explains what bad things happen in a tornado.
For purposes of this module, it's DC 10 strength or DC 20 fly to be able to move. And if you are size large or smaller, your same check is also required to hit a DC 15 strength or DC 25 fly, or else you are "blown away." However, the tornado text says to replace the "blown away" result with a "sucked into the tornado" result. This does 6d6 damage for 1d10 rounds.
So... my question. The "Before Combat" text in the tactics section of an enemy monster stat block... I used to assume it was all setup for the fight, done before initiative was rolled. The "Before Combat" text is stuff that happens before the PCs can interact or stop it, so it's almost always fait accompli.
However... for the final fight, the bad guy supposedly does all his "Before Combat" stuff when he sees the PCs, but he has no ranks in Perception and no Wisdom bonus. Even if you grant that he could take 20 just standing there scouring the landscape for enemies, his total result is just 20, and that will be curb stomped by the PCs. At level 11, the PCs will get results of 30 or 40 or 50 for Perception, even with a meh roll.
In other words, while I want him to get all his "Before Combat" stuff done before combat, I see no practical way to achieve this other than to cheat. The PCs will see him a good 100+ feet before he sees them. They will have cast a ton of buffs and surprise him.
In the case of the game I just played, we Dimension Door'd right behind him and a barbarian killed him on round 1.
So what do you guys do about problems like that? Do you just say, "The module insists that the enemy has summoned babau and put up buffs, so GM fiat -- it's done," or do you say, "Perception of 40 beats the enemy so handily that the PCs have invalidated his tactics block and now I have to improvise."
Or something else...? How sacred is the "Before Combat" section?
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Semi-sacred. I'd go for doing it by GM fiat because otherwise it's really no fun to fight an enemy who has no chance at all.
I mean, it's a definite flaw in the scenario, but old scenarios have huge plot holes all the time. You can try to do everything "fair", but is it really that much fun to curbstomp enemies because they're not even given the chance to use their bad tactics?
Now if the players came up with some really interesting plan to follow him covertly, that would be different. I'm not going to block players if they really went an extra mile for it. But "of course we maxed our Perception" doesn't count as making an unusual effort.
I'm not going to lie to the players about it either - if they ask, I'll say "yes, the author put that in there. It's silly but otherwise you have a completely lame encounter. Don't complain to me, I didn't write it that way".
Thanks Lau. I'm going to apply this here to the module in question, but also to all the PFS modules I run. Muh appreciated.