PFS #9-16: Fallen Family, Broken Name

[Lindley Court]

Hi all, I just got this scenario (I'm GMing it this Saturday) and noticed something odd about the chronicle sheet.

Spoiler:

The gold pieces gained scale with the number of quests done, but not with level. House of Harmonious Wisdom, which was structured similarly, scaled them with both number of quests and level.

So, is that element of the chronicle correct? Or should there be an adjustment to how much is earned?

[John Compton]

The gold earned should mirror values on the Chronicle sheet for #8–16.

Correct gp values for #9–16:

1 Quest—L1: 100, L2: 150, L3: 250, L4: 350, L5: 450
2 Quests—L1: 200, L2: 300, L3: 500, L4: 700, L5: 900
3 Quests—L1: 300, L2: 450, L3: 750, L4: 1,050, L5: 1,350
4 Quests—L1: 400, L2: 600, L3: 1,000, L4: 1,400, L5: 1,800
5 Quests—L1: 500, L2: 750, L3: 1,250, L4: 1,750, L5: 2,250

I'm following up to get that corrected. In the meantime, I'm also posting this information in product discussion thread.

[Lindley Court]

Thanks so much, John! I noticed that the scenario states that it can be replayed with characters of levels 1-5. I remember a similar statement in 8-16 but that that was adjusted later to be level 1 only. Which would it be?

[Terminalmancer]

Yeah, official clarification would be nice. I would assume based on the blog post that it follows the standard "replayable at level 1 only" rules though.

[Jeffrey Stop]

The description of the hellfire rod (page 12) says this:
"This black rod inlaid with silver Abyssal script curves slightly, ..."

While the Conclusion (page 12) says:
"If any of the PCs are capable of reading or speaking Infernal, ..."

Given the name of the item, I'm assuming Abyssal is a typo and should be Infernal.

The art for the item seems off, too, given the description of the item as black with silver script and the picture shows neither. In this case, I'm assuming the description trumps the art, but if there's any clarification on this very minor quibble, I'd appreciate it.

[Belafon]

Jeffrey Stop wrote:

The description of the hellfire rod (page 12) says this:

"This black rod inlaid with silver Abyssal script curves slightly, ..."

While the Conclusion (page 12) says:
"If any of the PCs are capable of reading or speaking Infernal, ..."

Given the name of the item, I'm assuming Abyssal is a typo and should be Infernal.

That is an error on the part of the writer. (I checked directly with the writer. His face turned very red.) The script should be in Infernal.

As for the art, most unpainted “black” woods are not truly black but are deep browns with purple shading. The artwork is a little lighter than a Brazilian Rosewood or similar hardwood, but not too far away. I suspect the artist went with a lighter tone and black lettering because of the size. Clearly delineating “silver” would have required more space. Plus silver rarely prints well on home printers.

To summarize: the rod is black wood with silver Infenal script.

[GM Lamplighter]

Just ran this for the first time since it came out. Thanks to the other authors and the PFS development team for making everything awesome!

I did come across a few surprises in my run last night (at subtier 4-5, party of 6, APL 4.5).

Estate:

The party kicked in the front door without going around the house at all. This means the bad guys are pretty bunched up and might be surrounded before Tavetti can get into the main hall. In the final version he has a potion of invisibility, which can help. Ghostly bardic music from an invisible bard is probably his best bet, since his spells don't pack much punch. Especially at this subtier, sleep can be problematic due to the 4HD cap. My party subdued them all, with no deaths. (Slumber witch and color spray heavens oracle make that pretty easy.)

We also had a haunt channeling medium in the party, which was AWESOME! No one was affected by the haunt, but were terrified when the savage angel appeared.

The animated portrait was fun as well. My party brought it back, so I used it as the source of some of V-C Brackett's information he provided for the next quests.

Scorch:

Great fun! We had a player with Profession (merchant) who was in his element. The encounter provides some fun choices, and everyone loved "more-than-one-hit" goblins. The vulture pilot did the most damage of the entire scenario. After a few big bombs, the slumber witch brought the vulture down, but it woke up when it hit the ground and nearly bit the witch in half. They captured a couple of goblins and retrieved the rod.

Memoriam:

Again, having a medium made this quest lots of fun! The group made friends with Delara and went after the caravan, and loved the surprise of the bad guy appearing - one of my favorite encounters ever! Unfortunately, good Will saves and another color spray from the oracle left the little guy with no allies, and he was quickly dispatched. The melancholy of releasing the ghost was very powerful.

Trove:

We were running really short on time, being crammed into a four-hour slot. The party gnome enjoyed the village, and another player had recently been to Saringallow and kept making tie-ins and comparisons. The encounter went about as expected, until one player decided to try and talk the drake down. Unfortunately, the rest of the party chose to keep circling the drake with hostile intent, and so combat ensued. Another save-or-suck from the oracle kept the drake out of the fight while the party looted the lair.

Epithet:

The party easily overcame the spiders and such, and were searching the lair when Pava arrived. Most of the group was against giving her the items, although one player did point out that they were hers legally. Then the savage angel appeared.

This is where things went bad. Pava went down almost immediately, so her goons fled while the erinyes applauded the party and calmly asked for the items.

At this point, most of the party decided to attack the erinyes, while one sat out. I was surprised at how eager the party was to take on the devil, despite knowing all about her. (I gave them all resistances, immunities, special attacks, SLAs, etc. even though they didn't roll that high - it's important that the party knows what they're up against!) They felt that, since they were doing each quest fresh with full abilities, they could handle it. That assessment was not correct.

Attacking the erinyes negates any protective power of the ring (which one person was wearing), and opens a world of hurt up on the players. We played three rounds, during which the devil made every save against slumber and the party failed every SR check and did almost no damage. I ramped things up with unholy blight and single shots before doing a full attack with the bow, and they still didn't quite get the message.

Luckily, at this point the venue came by to kick us out due to time. I asked if they planned to stay and fight, or flee. 5 our of 6 said fight, so I explained that the erinyes took to the air, firing flaming arrows or using unholy blight every round until they were all killed. At this point their resolve softened and they decided to flee.

Party survived, returned items to V-C Brackett, fun was had by all! Wish we had a full five-hour slot to avoid rushing.

[Michael Sayre]

Jeffrey Stop wrote:

The description of the hellfire rod (page 12) says this:

"This black rod inlaid with silver Abyssal script curves slightly, ..."

While the Conclusion (page 12) says:
"If any of the PCs are capable of reading or speaking Infernal, ..."

Given the name of the item, I'm assuming Abyssal is a typo and should be Infernal.

Sorry, this is on me. I was working on developing 9-16 while I was still getting set up on all of our tools and processes, and clearly I missed something I should have noticed. I thought I caught and updated all the "Abyssal" references, but that one obviously slipped through. It should be Infernal.

Sasha Hall wrote:

Thanks so much, John! I noticed that the scenario states that it can be replayed with characters of levels 1-5. I remember a similar statement in 8-16 but that that was adjusted later to be level 1 only. Which would it be?

The How To Play says "Pathfinder Society Scenario #9–16: Fallen Family, Broken Name is a series of short, 1-hour quests for 1st- through 5th-level characters that is replayable for 1st-level characters." So consider replay limited to 1st level as the official ruling.

[GM Héctor]

Ran this as well. The players had a blast despite the pressure of the time: our local shop only allows us 5 hours, MAYBE 5:30.

It was pretty fun overall, but I have two questions.

Spoilers for both.

1) Page 22, it says "the ettercap spits out a web to entangle the nearest PC not captured in the pit trap". What pit trap?

2) Do you only get Impressive Find if you finished 3 or 5 quests? If you finished 4 do you still get it or not?

[theshoveller]

How should I read the map of the house?

Where is the front door? Is the veranda above it?

[Michael Sayre]

GM Héctor wrote:

Ran this as well. The players had a blast despite the pressure of the time: our local shop only allows us 5 hours, MAYBE 5:30.

It was pretty fun overall, but I have two questions.

Spoilers for both.

1) Page 22, it says "the ettercap spits out a web to entangle the nearest PC not captured in the pit trap". What pit trap?

I am beginning to suspect that I may have had some connectivity issues while doing copyfitting that prevented certain changes I made from actually hitting the server, because I distinctly recall removing that line (along with the pit trap). Long story short that final adventure was running pretty long so we nixed the pit trap to speed things up and help the quest fit into its expected time frame better.

GM Héctor wrote:

2) Do you only get Impressive Find if you finished 3 or 5 quests? If you finished 4 do you still get it or not?

Yes, you receive Impressive Find for completing 3 or more of the quests, including if you complete 4.

[CanisDirus]

Prepping to run this in a couple of days. I have to say that I am a little bit disappointed that there are no "reporting conditions" for this scenario, especially given how much open space there is on page 24. The scenario suggests that there will be future consequences based on whether or not the PCs leave the final encounter peacefully with the erinyes or Pava (or both) - the perfect situation for data-collection.

[nightdeath]

Played this and granted it me who wanted to play high with two level 1 & a 2.
I was level 4 with another level 3.
We(or I was) were fairly confident we could do so as we covered all areas.

spoilers:

A certain part of this adventure made this very challenging to say the least. At high tier, it would be very challenging to discover that the ring itself is dangerous granted that it's skills makes it hard to discover plus the fact that player pretty much loses control of his/her character in certaint aspects.
Imo that particular encounter should not be included in a tier like this.
Apparently at my flgs, a low tier table pretty much got tpk if not for gm handwaving, sensing the unhappiness and frustration of the table.
That ring is op. Seriously. Lol

I did enjoy the challenge though.

[GM Nowruz]

Hello, I am quite new to GMing in PFS and have a question on XP.

Do the PCs get 5 XP for finishing the 5 quests and 7 prestige points?

Thanks

[BretI]

No, you do not total the rewards.

Each line is the reward for completing that many quests.

If they only complete 1 quest and are 4th level they get 350 gp, 1 xp, and 1 pp.

In order to get 2 pp they must complete at least 4 of the quest sections.

[GM Nowruz]

Thanks

[Selvaxri]

Played this at PaizoCon'18 and with a party of Lvl 4/5's... and a lvl 1 Wizard named Jeff.
He only nearly died once during the whole scenario. He was sorely disappointed that he only got 500 gp while the rest of us go over 1k.

Still, despite being the receiving end of a lot of jokes, Jeff had fun as did everyone else.
My Grippli grappler managed to hogtie a fire drake, and the hunter/butcher in Umak was ecstatic to get a whole Fire Drake to make jerky out of.