Xamanthe

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Goblin Squad Member. RPG Superstar 6 Season Star Voter. Organized Play Member. 3,177 posts (3,182 including aliases). 38 reviews. 7 lists. 1 wishlist. 15 Organized Play characters. 3 aliases.



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Surprises abound.

4/5

Plays really well, like a First Steps, part 4. This review contains spoilers.

The Good:


  • The Minotaur is a great choice for this scenario. Deadly, solid tactics, and can be overcome by a party with good tactics themselves. Has an epic feel to a solid dungeon crawl.
  • The Humanity puzzle is fantastic, forcing players to think very creatively. Might throw experienced players off course and let newbies shine.
  • The random choices in both the encounters and the Humanity puzzle are an excellent choice of design. Might be a lot of book work, though the shared prep folder now has the stat blocks. (Thanks to who did that!)
  • Excellent optional encounter for a tier 1-2 replayable scenario. Consider running it even if you're going overtime, if you can. Especially if the party fought the minotaur at the beginning and came through okay. It's essentially another pseudo-BBEG for them.
  • I almost missed this - fantastic items on the chronicle sheet for early characters!

The Bad:


  • Rolling too low on the encounter tables can make things too easy for an experienced party, and there's a sidebar suggesting you specifically shouldn't change things out to make things more challenging. Edit: Apparently, this may be less of an issue than the sidebar suggests.
  • If the party attacks the minotaur at the beginning and wins, the scenario doesn't really cover what happens throughout the rest of the scenario (which is meant to be tension building), and then falls into a very anticlimactic end, where nothing else happens.
  • The Master of Scrolls toddles away quickly at the end of his wall text, and then there's an option for players to ask him questions? I had to have Janira answer them instead!
  • Janira Gavix's initials are on her Wayfinder - J.L. What the? (related)
  • The wayfinder boon here is really odd considering how it feels (to me) like The Confirmation should be played after First Steps. You lose out if you're not playing a brand new character? And if you're a good Pathfinder who's already bought a wayfinder, you lose out again? A couple of design tweaks could easily fix this; I don't think the restrictions really add anything.

Overall, it's still a lot of fun.


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Best item in the game lies here

5/5

One of the best items in Pathfinder is in this book - even legal in PFS.

Keep an eye out for the quite cheap Dream Journal of the Pallid Seer, which will very likely save all of your character's lives once.

Even if you never plan to play the game, this singular item is probably worth it.


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Great to play, great to run.

4/5

The idea of being able to meddle with the tapestry is a great one, and both the title and description had me pretty keen in anticipation into what a Pathfinder could do to change the nature of reality. While what actually happens left me in a little bit of disappointment, what the game actually ended up being was still pretty good fun set on a solid premise.

The game is a perfect mix of social, combat and skill-based encounters and, what I think PFS needs more of, a potentially shorter-than-usual game.

The only real flaw is that the scenario doesn't scale by tier for skill checks and after scaling down for 4 players, feels a bit too easy (and that's something I usually don't say - it's usually on the too-hard side of things). Worse again if both of these are in play.

Still, these are both pretty minor and players are unlikely to be terribly disappointed in what is essentially a fun playthrough with an interesting ending.


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6 player tables only

2/5

The other reviews sum up this special pretty well (the good and the bad). There is something that many don't seem to have noticed yet.

If you're about to be seated at a 4-player table, WALK AWAY.

That is, unless you don't care about your character. This special has no scaling through it and some (not all) of the fights are anywhere between very difficult and downright unfair.


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Far too hard.

2/5

Player perspective, played at 10-11 normal mode.

It might be wise to work out what went wrong with this scenario by comparing it to the much more successful Portal of the Sacred Rune. Still difficult, but there's a fine line between difficult, challenging and fun, and near-impossible.

The lack of roleplay really isn't an issue. You go in expecting a fight from start to finish, and it's actually not even quite as continuous as that, but it does feel like the pressure is on.

Spoiler:
This kind of thing should be rule #1 when a scenario hits development: You just can't have a scenario that has a save or die in the first turn of the first round.

It forces a player who showed up expecting a good time to sit back with their dead character and watch. There's no fun in that. That they are high tier or should have had a better cloak of resistance just isn't a good excuse.

Disabling of the runes was actually quite creative, especially for a high tier scenario. In a scenario that is almost all about fighting through the minions and the boss, this short break with a bit of thinking is a welcome break between fights.

But then you come to Krune. Even after disabling runes, he is far too powerful. The same problem applies with empowered maximised horrid wilting as with the earlier save or die, only here it's hp instead of saves. Potentially TWICE, over the whole party. Near-guaranteed death-o-rama.

I don't know what the tactics said about Limited Wish/Wish, but there is enough debate in the forums to suggest that whatever guidelines was provided wasn't enough. This is an outright dangerous spell to put in the hands of the GMs if you want your player base to have fun, at the very least not without some very, very strict rules about its use.

I was absolutely not going to play on hard mode, but after having played it, what I was expecting for hard mode was experienced in normal mode. I know he's a Runelord, but it still needs to be toned down, guys.


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Insane setup.

1/5

As spoiler free as possible.

It's really hard to write a review for a scenario when the encounters don't let you get the game started before a TPK is likely to occur.


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Tough for tier 1-2

3/5

I played this years ago, and GM'd it only recently for a tier 1-2 group, so my memory playing is a bit hazy here. It wasn't bad when I played it, and I believe that was at tier 3-4 anyway. This review is based around tier 1-2, mostly negative.

I'd rate it lower except that my play experience was better at the higher tiers when we felt better equipped to handle what we found; due to our levels, not due to what we found in the scenario.

Spoiler:
The big problem is with the encounter with the derros. Darkness at will. If you have dwarves or aasimars in your party, you're fine. If you have a spellcaster with darkvision handy, you're fine. Failing that, the party needs to know to get out of there, otherwise they'll be stuck in a darkness-filled encounter that is almost unstoppable. They're level 1 or 2, so unless you have a level 3 guy in your party (unlikely; subtier 3-4 exists), nobody is likely to be able to cast darkvision at this tier. There's no scrolls hiding around the place to prepare them to even make a caster level check for it.

The bad guy at the end is tailor-made to be much scarier than she actually is, but it's difficult to play her like that with the elements, and you'll struggle for time if you try if you got trapped in the derro encounter described above - effectively destroying the weight of the plot of the whole scenario.

She's a big deal here. The derro isn't.


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Time is of the essence.

3/5

I've played this, GM'd in person and GM'd online with this one.

This is an incredibly exciting scenario when it opens. The idea of infiltrating a Chelish embassy, staying subtle, finding some evidence, and getting out again - all in 1 hour - with the contact of a Venture Captain along the way and some goodies given to you from the start, is a fantastic idea.

It takes a creative party and fast thinking from everyone involved, in circumstances that you won't be used to, to get through this mission.

GMing is tricky here, as the regular rules don't apply and the book isn't great at recommending ideas on how to handle certain situations that are likely to come up.

Spoiler:


  • The vent puzzle is very easy. Ways around this: don't show players the vent map and don't assume a square in the vent is 5ft. The book says it takes several minutes to get through - this is the guide to follow. Tell the players you can go left or right here, and point out the markings where applicable.
  • The DR was never really that bad anytime for us - the imps have a reach of 0ft, keep that in mind because it'll help.
  • The coded message will take a significant amount of time to decode. When I played this, the GM allowed us to decode during combat while taking no action during the combat, but in realtime, that was maybe 10 minutes of time in what should have been 18 seconds. Without this, we would have struggled. Both groups I GM'd didn't opt to do this, and struggled severely with time in the records archive.
  • Time limits, and maybe skill DCs, in moving between rooms really should have been better labelled in the book, in bold or something similar. This scenario was a golden opportunity to improve readability for GMs, and they didn't take it.
  • Someone pointed out the whole first paragraph of the first wall of text with Ambrus Valsin actually makes the introduction worse. I tested this, and they were absolutely right. Why set the scene "from what you remember a few hours ago" instead of having it happen immediately?
  • What's the name of the Chelish ambassador?

The one thing I would recommend to every GM is that despite what the book says about time warnings, I would prompt players to ask you more often about about how much time has gone by, because with the differences between realtime, movement time and combat time all being different, it is near-impossible for players to be able to keep track of themselves.


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Mixed bag

4/5

This is a really tough scenario to rate, because it has such a different feel to the norm, and in theory, it seems like it is supposed to be an amazing game. When it comes to running or playing the game, the outcome really is unpredictable.

The first thing I have to say is if you're playing online and you're used to roleplaying in chat/play by post rather than voice, as a GM, you really need to lean towards voice, or the game will suffer for it. I did some over voice and some over chat and the voices (even the not-great ones) were much more entertaining than the non-voice ones; I've done roleplay via chat a lot in the past and it just didn't work as well here.

PC choices:
Characters who don't roleplay well will have serious trouble here, and this is both a good and bad thing, because most of those characters will be combat-oriented who mistakenly don't prepare for scenarios like this one. It's supposed to bite them. Winning this mission can be tough, and it's a smart party that will get through this scenario, not just the one that hits the hardest. Any combat oriented, socially lacking characters will really have to push themselves to get through this, and work with the party to do whatever they can, or risk getting bored to pieces.

The scenario is written well, providing an appearance, a personality, and a great process for adapting Pathfinder rules to do what the scenario wants. Everybody love this break-from-the-norm style. It risks a bit of confusion, but it leads to a well told story and it trains GMs well for it.

The level of freedom isn't 100% clear through the scenario, this feels like the scenario's main weakness, as it had a tendency to come up a lot. It feels like you're having a short chat, but it lasts hours? Can I leave and go for a walk? This is normally easy to deal with, but in a scenario with this kind of format, it becomes important to be properly defined in the book.


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Mixed opinions about this one.

3/5

Strange that the product discussion is mostly positive while the product reviews are mostly negative!

Minor spoilers for this review:

Spoiler:

The beauty of this scenario is really in one particular roleplayed encounter, where the rest of the scenario leads up to it without you really realising it.

The scenario doesn't take much into account from parts 1 and 2, but there is one hook - Skagni's map - from part 2, which you follow throughout the scenario. This, too, is pretty refreshing, because usually - maybe - you'd get to see a map of where you are briefly before the game starts, in the "Where In Golarion" section. Here, you follow that very important map throughout the scenario. In other words, this is not just a bunch of random events, it is a journey that happens to have random events happen.

So, yes, there's letdowns (maps, editing errors, other mechanical things that should have been better looked at), but if your GM is making sure you understand every word of what you come across, and making sure you play your part where it's needed, this can be a pretty valuable little venture. I even had one player tell me it was the best scenario he'd played to date.


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Step outside your comfort zone.

5/5

Fantastic mod, and I'd say quite a bit underrated. The beauty of it is that it really tries to tell the story in a creative way, and it succeeds pretty well - players are likely to have a lot of fun with this.

It's the kind of scenario you wouldn't want a brand new player to play, but is a great change of pace for a character who has been through a few scenarios already.


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Painful for tier 1-2

2/5

While the module is well written to try and anticipate circumstances that may come up, it really feels like this module was created with the higher tiers in mind and 1-2 being an afterthought.

The fact that it is highly recommended that you play part 1 first (which is sometimes just not possible) to make parts of this scenario make sense - including the difficulty factor - don't help here.

Some faction missions, while somewhat more creative than some scenarios, are also not very well thought out here in terms of difficulty and wording.


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Unnecessarily deadly

1/5

I played through this scenario with level 1 characters. There's an encounter in the scenario which appears to be borderline impossible to beat after you learn the full circumstances of the encounter via metagaming. You can't design a tier 1-2 with that kind of encounter in the game.

Aside from that, it seemed like a pretty straightforward scenario, which only added to the deadly surprise later on.

I didn't have a closer look at higher tiers, but at higher levels, characters probably would have been better suited to handle it.


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