5-18 - The Stranger Within GM Discussion [SPOILERS]


GM Discussion

Liberty's Edge 3/5

First up, there is an encounter scaling note on p.11 that references an encounter that doesn't seem to exist, and there are no scaling notes for encounter B. It looks like an encounter was removed in editing, and they removed the wrong scaling note.

Second, for the Andoran and Quadira faction boons, it says you get the benefit for free; does that just refer to the GP cost, and you still pay the Prestige, or does free mean you pay neither GP or Prestige?

That is all I have found so far, but it looks like this will be a lot of fun to run next week. Thank you for bringing back Miss Feathers, she is a treat to run.

Paizo Employee 4/5 Developer

Slartibart wrote:
Second, for the Andoran and Quadira faction boons, it says you get the benefit for free; does that just refer to the GP cost, and you still pay the Prestige, or does free mean you pay neither GP or Prestige?

To answer this one, it is free both in terms of Prestige Points and in terms of gold.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Pretty sure Godsmouth Ossuary is supposed to be Godsmouth Heresy?

Anyway, looking forward to running this one. I should have stat blocks available soon.

5/5 RPG Superstar 2012 Top 4

The scaling note on page 11 of #5-18 is the scaling note from page 11 of #5-19.

5/5

I like the encounter with

Spoiler:
the deathtrap oozes. However, it does leave me with some questions.

1) In the lower subtier, it seems that the second trap is actually the deathtrap ooze, and in the higher subtier, it appears that both traps have been replaced by the advanced deathtrap oozes. According to the ooze's trap form ability, it uses its own attack bonus but all of the other effects of the trap it is mimicking. However, in the higher subtier, the stats given for the trap do not mirror what they should be if it was actually replaced by a deathtrap ooze - the advanced deathtrap ooze has a +15 to hit (+13 if adjusted for 4 players), and the listed trap has a to hit bonus of +20. Was this just an oversight, or do the deathtrap oozes imitate the traps in addition to the actual traps being in place?

2) Exactly how does the trap trigger? It's noted as location, which seems to indicate that entering the noted location on the encounter map would trigger the trap. However, this would mean that the trap would need to swing through and destroy the actual door in order to function, which is impossible given the description of "sturdy wooden door," which I presume would be the same as a strong wooden door (20 hp, 5 hardness, max of 24 damage from the trap).

Was the intent for the trap to trigger on the door being opened?

Scarab Sages 5/5

Do we have any idea what the correction on the scaling for encounter B2 is, that is if there is any scaling (The CR is only APL+1).

5/5

so, just finished running this one. it ran at seven hours, without the optional encounter.

specifics of the table - 5 players ranging in level from 5 to 8, with the APL coming in at 7, so they played up, with the 4 player adjustment. i think that contributed to the additional time a little bit, but i don't think that it was the majority.

Spoiler:
so the party arrives in kaer maga and begins gathering information. to cover more ground, they split into two teams, one team heading to the augurs, another to the sweettalker. they uncover the information about the gaels' ties to the freemen and to the commerce league. as one of the characters had previously adventured in kaer maga and had dealings with dakar, he knew very well that they would be summoned at dakar's leisure, if he wanted to meet with the group.

they decided that they didn't want to spend any more time gathering information and headed out to the common house. they easily convinced the council to consider withdrawing their support of the gaels, and set out to free the pegasus. this actually did end up taking longer than it probably should have, as the party didn't really have a cohesive plan on what they wanted to do, and they approached the sczarni a couple of times. eventually they decided to cast invis on the ninja and have him sneak into the pen and untie the pegasus while the rest of the group created a distraction. unfortunately, the sczarni noticed the ropes being untied just as they were finishing up, and combat ensued. it ended with one of the sczarni dead and the other one fleeing. after heading back to the common house, the andoran faction members easily swayed all five members of the council to send an envoy to andoran, and then decided to head out to gather more information on where the gaels were actually staying.

as the aforementioned editing error removed the scaling information for this encounter from the scenario and there was no other information available, i ran the encounter as presented for the 8-9 subtier. in my opinion, it was still not a hard encounter, combat-wise, and had there been only a single enforcer, it would not have played out terribly differently than it did with two (as i mentioned, one fled after the first went down).

enter the encounter with miss feathers, and unearthing the whereabouts of the villa, as well as an additional hour spent listening to her stories. at this point, they had befriended all three of the contacts, and brought their effective time (as affects the prep in the final encounter) down to zero.

up to this point, things seemed to be flowing rather normally for a PFS scenario.

so, off to the villa they went, while they did detect the trap on the front door and bypassed it and set off the trap inside without anyone being targeted, they did get spanked pretty hard by the deathtrap oozes. the party's cleric (the 5th level player at the table) was taken to -29, and one of the party's inquisitors was knocked unconscious. they realized that the ruckus they were causing was drawing the attention of the authorities, and managed to make a very fast search of the house and get out before the ardoc and golem patrol arrived.

this encounter was nasty for the group in question. while the scaled down version of the encounter removed the advanced template from the two oozes, it was still a bit much. i think that a single advanced deathtrap ooze would have been a bit more appropriate, but that may vary from table to table.

they make a quick stop at a temple to raise and restore the cleric, then decide to head out to find more information about orphyro, as they did manage to decipher the note found in the house. as they leave the temple, they find dakar's goons waiting, and take a little ride, have the meeting with dakar, and agree to leave orphyro alive.

skipped the optional encounter outside the shop with the zombies and snake swarms.

they head into the shop, buy the story about the boss being out, and combat ensues as they all filter into the shop. the wights are taken out pretty quickly, but they don't take out the sczarni enforcer before the second one makes it out from the back room. some ninja/rogue cold war action ensues as the sczarni aren't able to sneak attack the ninja and he's not able to sneak attack them (for some reason the only flanks they were ever able to set up were against the ninja). combat lasts around 7 or 8 rounds. imelda and orphyro make the perception checks in the third round of combat, and once combat is over, the PC's spend 7 or 8 rounds healing up, giving the final encounter plenty of time to fully prep up.

they find the trap door and head downstairs, heading right into the room with the magic mouth. a couple of rounds are spent searching the door, laying down weapons, waiting for something happen, then picking them back up, giving imelda more than enough time to down her extract of invisibility. they kick open the doors, and combat ensues for a long time. the ranged inquisitor takes orphyro out with a mix of lethal and non-lethal damage, ultimately leaving him alive, over the course of two rounds. the ninja went down to a full attack from imelda in the first round, and never made it back to consciousness for the remainder of the battle. the vampire grappled the cleric, but was not able to drain any of his life force before being taken out (3 or 4 rounds, falling to the melee inquisitor). imelda, now all alone, spends the rest of the battle alternating between melee attacks and throwing bombs. with her AC, the PC's are rarely able to hit her. in the end, things are pretty close, with most of the party down to single hp's (if not already unconscious), but in the end, they prevail.

it seems that the encounter in the store before heading into the secret basement was possibly what the put the scenario over in time in this case. while the encounter may not seem a lot in and of itself, when coupled with the previous combat with the deathtrap oozes and the upcoming very challenging fight, it was an additional draw on resources that made the final encounter very difficult. in this case, the scaling for the four party table actually made things more difficult for the party, as they had a fresh combatant enter into combat a few rounds in. had the second enforcer been removed entirely, i think that it would have been a bit more appropriate. again, this may have been because of the particular party, but i don't think that's 100% the case.

all in all, it was very challenging for the party, and overall they seemed to enjoy it... but it was just WAAAAAYYYY too long, which is something that i've noticed becoming more the norm for PFS scenarios. now, for this one, i'm going to withhold a final judgment until i have a chance to run it again, but it does seem like there's just a bit too much crammed in to run comfortably in a 5 hour slot. in this case, the party didn't spend an overly long amount of time indulging in role-play (in fact, i moved it along pretty briskly, because i realized early that things were going to run long), but there was just a lot of grind. some of that may be to party composition, and the fact that they were playing "up," but it still seems like there's a lot of story crammed in there.

now, i'm certainly not going to complain about good stories, and in the past, there has sometimes been a definite lack of that in some PFS scenarios (or at least, a lack of story that the PC's can realistically access). i love the fact that we're getting much more compelling stories, but i feel that these have come at the cost of scenarios that are much longer than the already unusual 5 hour assumed length of a PFS slot. fate of the fiend and destiny of sands 3 are scenarios that definitely fall into this category, and even destiny part 2 can run longer than optimal.

i'm sure development is a maddening balancing act between content and length, and while the recent handful of scenarios have been amazing in amount of content, it seems to have also resulted in scenarios that take longer than usual to run.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

As a different data point, I ran this scenario in 4.5 hours, and that's with the PCs wanting to take some time and investigate the Freeman Society's fighting school to see of the Gaels had left anything there. The fights also didn't take that long because the PCs were fairly well built (and I screwed up the last fight tactically).

That being said, I feel like the problem with this scenario is not in the time, but it's built on the PCs following the script moreso than other PFS scenarios. For example, what happens when the PCs ask the Freemen Society "Where have your people been meeting the Gaels?" The answer to that question is Orypho's shop, since there's potentially 2 of them there, but if you give the PCs that information, then Dakar has no bargaining chip with them and therefore made that scene useless. And that's a reasonable question for the PCs to be asking.

If you treat this like an actual investigation as opposed to railroading the PCs, it breaks.

Grand Lodge 4/5

James McTeague wrote:

As a different data point, I ran this scenario in 4.5 hours, and that's with the PCs wanting to take some time and investigate the Freeman Society's fighting school to see of the Gaels had left anything there. The fights also didn't take that long because the PCs were fairly well built (and I screwed up the last fight tactically).

That being said, I feel like the problem with this scenario is not in the time, but it's built on the PCs following the script moreso than other PFS scenarios. For example, what happens when the PCs ask the Freemen Society "Where have your people been meeting the Gaels?" The answer to that question is Orypho's shop, since there's potentially 2 of them there, but if you give the PCs that information, then Dakar has no bargaining chip with them and therefore made that scene useless. And that's a reasonable question for the PCs to be asking.

If you treat this like an actual investigation as opposed to railroading the PCs, it breaks.

It was still fun, even if we did have several PCs along who tended to break the scenario combats. At least we usually knew what we were looking at.

Lore Warden:
It is amazing how badly a Lore Warden Fighter can break things, just because Wizards and Bards are fairly uncommon. Add in how good they are, in general, with combat maneuvers, and it can just get sick.

Sczarni 3/5 RPG Superstar 2012 Top 8

James McTeague wrote:

As a different data point, I ran this scenario in 4.5 hours, and that's with the PCs wanting to take some time and investigate the Freeman Society's fighting school to see of the Gaels had left anything there. The fights also didn't take that long because the PCs were fairly well built (and I screwed up the last fight tactically).

That being said, I feel like the problem with this scenario is not in the time, but it's built on the PCs following the script moreso than other PFS scenarios. For example, what happens when the PCs ask the Freemen Society "Where have your people been meeting the Gaels?" The answer to that question is Orypho's shop, since there's potentially 2 of them there, but if you give the PCs that information, then Dakar has no bargaining chip with them and therefore made that scene useless. And that's a reasonable question for the PCs to be asking.

If you treat this like an actual investigation as opposed to railroading the PCs, it breaks.

Personally, I would dance around that particular question by saying that the Freemen don't know where they Gaels were staying. That lack of trust would add to the Freemen's frustration because they normally expect allies to aid in keeping the Bottoms district safe and secure. In the likely rare case that the PCs really mess up their relationship with the Freemen, I'd just say that Imelda sent a runner to the Price of Freedom asking for backup to guard the shop, and that knowledge hadn't reached the council yet.

Good mysteries are hard to write!

Sczarni 3/5 RPG Superstar 2012 Top 8

Matthew Starch wrote:

I like the encounter with

** spoiler omitted **

The balcony:

1. Hmm. I think I wrote the trap stats before making both of them oozes in the high subtier. I don't think it takes anything away from the encounter to use the ooze's lower attack bonus for the trap.

2. The way I run it, the trap triggers when someone steps through the doorway. The idea was to give the party a better chance to spot it and try to disable it, and maybe make the knowledge check to identify it before the oozes blob out on them.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32

I can solve the bit with the sidebar - it should appear in Horn of Aroden.

Sovereign Court 4/5

I played this yesteray, run by NiTessine, our VC. It took exactly 4 hours.

We played the lower tier, and I liked the scenario very much. The challenge was spot on, and although I made an unlucky critical hit with a firearm to Orphyro, dealing 51 damage and outright killing him, I'm feeling proud about the antiboon I got.

What I adviced other GMs to do is to read up about Kaer Maga and try to convey this information to the players. The place has huge amounts of history and information, but in a short PFS session you don't really get any of it.

For example one might know about the augurs beforehand and seek them out premptively. We were all clueless.

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ****

I can totally agree with you there, Deussu. We were in the same boat in not knowing much about Kaer Maga.

Also, be familiar with the Knowledge skill DCs... pretty much can learn anything with a DC20!

That all being said, when I played it on Sunday (Andy Christian ran it), we had a blast. We had an interesting mix of characters (Witch7/Monk2, Conjurer8, Oracle1/Cleric8, Sorcerer9, Conjurer9, Druid9), without a "primary" front line combatant. This mostly didn't hurt us.

Social and interaction skills are pretty important, but they can still make it through, of course, but it takes 3X as long to find each contact.

One thing you could do, if you have a group without a "face" character is have them walking through the gates, getting propositioned by several potential guides (it is mentioned in the scenario). It did sort of seem, though, that a 5gp expenditure would get around needing skills, so I'll need to read up on that, better (Do they get the 1d4 or 3d4 hours, for example).

Going through it linearly wasn't bad... in fact, the flow was pretty good. We took about 5 hours, as I recall... got started a little late, so butted right up against store closing.

Looking forward to running this 3X at GenCon!

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ****

Slartibart wrote:
First up, there is an encounter scaling note on p.11 that references an encounter that doesn't seem to exist, and there are no scaling notes for encounter B. It looks like an encounter was removed in editing, and they removed the wrong scaling note.

Has it been posted whether or not this is an error and there is no scaling at all, or that there is scaling but the wrong information is in the scenario?

Lantern Lodge 5/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Let me just say, backup weapons/important gear are awesome to have in GM statblocks.

The look on the sunder-specialist's face when he broke Opphyro's holy symbol, only to have him also have a tattooed holy symbol was pretty satisfying.

And any scenario where the enemy gets a chance to adapt to the PCs is nice, too.

Sczarni 4/5 RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

In the intro for Part 1, the text says "If the PCs desire, they can hire a local guide for 5 gold pieces per day to help them navigate Kaer Maga, locate the best informants, and avoid trouble."

However, I'm not seeing anything that explains what effect hiring a guide provides. It sounds like a guide ought to reduce the amount of time it takes to gather information from the three NPCs listed, or perhaps give a bonus on the Diplomacy checks to find and/or befriend them. But I don't see anything in the text that would indicate this.

Or does the gathering info phase assume that the PCs hired a guide? If so, what are the penalties that should be applied if they decide to do it themselves?

There is a separate section in the writeup for the sweettalker where the text mentions hiring a "guide or interpreter" to translate for the PCs. Is this intended to be the same guide referred to earlier, or do the PCs need to hire a separate guide/interpreter for this task?

Thanks!

Shadow Lodge 4/5 Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West

I just ran this one on Sunday at KublaCon. I had been signed up to play, but we ended up without a GM for that table, so I stepped behind the screen. I basically had to run it cold - I only got to see the scenario half way through the first game of the day, and I was running Wardstone Patrol in the second slot, so all I had time for was a quick read-through.

I loved the scenario; I particularly liked meeting old friends(?) from earlier adventures in Kaer Maga. I just couldn't bring myself to cut short the initial role-playing interactions, so we ended up at the table for over 5 hours. I suspect it will take about as long next time I run it, too; while I'll be better-prepared, there were a couple of places I fast-forwarded, and I know I could play the final encounter better and give the party a somewhat longer fight.

I missed spotting any pointers that indicated in which order the three middle pieces should be run, but did spot a clue in section "A" to the section "B" encounter, so basically railroaded the table into running them in order.

TL;DR Great fun - I look forward to running this one again.

Grand Lodge 4/5 ** Venture-Agent, Colorado—Denver

What is the CMB of the wrecking ball trap? Same as it's attack bonus?

4/5 *

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Society Subscriber
roll4initiative wrote:
What is the CMB of the wrecking ball trap? Same as it's attack bonus?

From the way it's written, I think you compare the same attack role to the victim's CMD.

Does anyone else find it funny that a necromancer who runs a shop selling undead and wears a skull on his face feels the need to cast undetectable alignment every day?

4/5 *

Matt Haddix wrote:
roll4initiative wrote:
What is the CMB of the wrecking ball trap? Same as it's attack bonus?

From the way it's written, I think you compare the same attack role to the victim's CMD.

Does anyone else find it funny that a necromancer who runs a shop selling undead and wears a skull on his face feels the need to cast undetectable alignment every day?

It's called the City of Strangers for a reason. If they have Trolls that slit their bellies and can do augeries, I don't think a man in a skull mask is really going to make much of an impression.

How are people letting their players know that there are 3 possible sources. All it says in the scenario is to make a check. If you pass, you find a contact in 1d4 hours. Should it say you found 3 possible contacts in 1d4? Or should they make 3 checks at the beginning for the 3 contacts?

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ****

Ross Tait wrote:
How are people letting their players know that there are 3 possible sources. All it says in the scenario is to make a check. If you pass, you find a contact in 1d4 hours. Should it say you found 3 possible contacts in 1d4? Or should they make 3 checks at the beginning for the 3 contacts?

I had the players make all three checks right up front, and then fed them the information on who they could contact. It won't matter for the timing (just tell them it takes 1-4 hours [or more if they fail their checks) to find the contacts).

I think giving them all three will help make this feel less "railroady", personally.

Grand Lodge 5/5

Ok I've played this scenario and now I'm prepping to run it, but my question is about the boons. With the new factions if a player is in the Exchange can he/she earn both the Sczarni and Qadira faction boons? (What if the character was never a part of either of those factions either by faction change or starting in the Exchange?)

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

The Exchange only counts as Qadira, not Sczarni.

Grand Lodge 5/5

Thanks, found it (well Mike Bramnik pointed it out to me) no Szcarni boons/vanities without a boon


Question about how to run the flayleaf zombies. First, the rules on poison:

SRD wrote:

If there is still poison active in you when you are attacked with that type of poison again, and you fail your initial save against the new dose, the doses stack. This has two effects, which last until the poisons run their course.

Increased Duration: Increase the duration of the poison by 1/2 the amount listed in its frequency entry.

Increased DC: Increase the poison's DC by +2.

So having reviewed that, the flayleaf zombie has a breath attack which is listed like this:

Quote:
Creatures caught in a cloud of bitter reddish flayleaf smoke must succeed at a DC 12 Fortitude save or take 1 point of Wisdom damage and become fatigued for 1 hour. This is a poison effect.

So, the "poison effect" line is giving me pause. Help me out. What can you tell me about the example scenario below?


  • Round 1: Zombie #1 does breath attack, everyone saves vs. DC 12. Everyone passes except the wizard.
  • Round 2: Zombie #2 does breath attack, wizard saves vs. DC 12? Or 14? Whatever number, let's assume he fails again.
  • Round 3: Zombie #1 does breath attack again, wizard saves vs. DC 12, 14, or 16?

Also, maybe later during round 3, two of the zombies die, and explode. This causes flayleaf clouds. More saving throws? And do they stack?

Also, do any of you know if this "poison effect" should be considered inhaled or contact? If it's inhaled, then Life Bubble stops it. If it's contact, like Cloudkill, then Life Bubble helps not at all.


A very belated reply to myself. I solved one of the mysteries, I think.

aboyd wrote:
do any of you know if this "poison effect" should be considered inhaled or contact? If it's inhaled, then Life Bubble stops it. If it's contact, like Cloudkill, then Life Bubble helps not at all.

I found the entry for the flayleaf drug and it lists it as inhaled or ingested. Since the zombies don't force-feed the PCs, my suspicion is that the poison is the other option: inhaled. Therefore, I'm going to rule in my games that Life Bubble stops it. If that helps anyone else, cool.

Liberty's Edge 4/5 *

The "This is a poison effect" line is there to let you know that immunity to poison and bonuses on saves vs poison come into play. Since there is no "frequency" to this (ie, you only save once), I don't think the usual poison "stacking" rule applies. For each zombie that breathes on you, you make a DC 12 Fort save; if any of your saves fail, you take the WIS damage and are fatigued for a total of 1 hour since your last failed save.

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ****

Mike Bramnik wrote:
Slartibart wrote:
First up, there is an encounter scaling note on p.11 that references an encounter that doesn't seem to exist, and there are no scaling notes for encounter B. It looks like an encounter was removed in editing, and they removed the wrong scaling note.
Has it been posted whether or not this is an error and there is no scaling at all, or that there is scaling but the wrong information is in the scenario?

As I am prepping to run this one again, I noticed that the original inquiry (nor any subsequent inquiries) had not yet been answered. Is there any scaling to Encounter B or Encounter C1?

Thanks.

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