 
Sign in to create or edit a product review. Feat taxes for skill uses make them less relevant, not more 
BigNorseWolf
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I'm seeing a lot of what I was afraid of here: Rumormonger like options. Options that don't expand the use of skills, bur rather by their existence constrain the use of skills only to people with a feat or special ability- feats skill focused characters don't have to spare. One of the reasons people complain about caster/skill disparity is that the expanding system has expanded the capabilities of magic. "Abilities" that already do what the skill does constrains them and makes just getting a spell to do it an even better option.
Call for a truce Plant something on someone (which i've seen used in pfs more than taking something off of someone) use knowledge geography to know where you're going with a tport Use aid another at range instead of... whatever aid anothers range was before. Get a sense of how your bluff is going Figure out what relationship two people have Bluff check to help out someone with a disguise size someone up Those are basic skill uses and making a socialite burn what few feats they have on them in a book that was supposed to help them be more relevant is patently absurd. Those uses should have been included as an expanded use of the system and then feats added to work within the new system to make them work better, or even added as alternate skill unlocks. Amazing, useful, thematic and clever feats and abilities for those who like it mix it up hand to tentacle with golarions nasties. Not a heck of a lot here. Especially for the druids and rangers you'd think this book would be a sure buy for. Its 31 pages map of woods is ok Table of contents.. A page explaining whats in the book... A second table of contents.. The traits are ok Some woodsey tricks and equipment Kits.. kits.. kits.. these are a waste of space The herbs are cool. The herbal witch is pretty thematic. Obligatory background information is ok... This skeeved me. 4 pages of optional building rules information for outdoor buildings. 2 pages of teamwork feats no one will ever take because.. teamwork feats. These really belong in an inquisitor book poisons are ok. The feats.... why is there more stuff here for a monk than a druid? Magic items are kinda meh. 2 pages of spells. Thematic, don't see anything really eye-popping. With all the druids i have there really should be more than one thing in this book i'd even consider taking. So many ways to go about this one. Diplomance it, murder hobo it, puzzle solve it, take your pick you're going to have a blast. Finally, andorans get to be andorans. No more of this filing building permits and planting rose gardens. Infiltrate their operation, rouse the rabble and lead them to glorious FREEEEDOOOOM! as you cut a bloody swath through the slavers holding them in bondage. And hallelujah most of the monsters/weird rules are in the back of the scenario. Truly epic mix of combat, exploration and interaction where what you do matters to how the scenario turns out full of history and background that's right at the forefront of the adventure rather than pushed into the background. The chery on top is the chronicle sheet. FINALLY! Useful stuff on a chronicle sheet for both the treasure and the boons *keels over in shock* A review a year in the making This was supposed to be the farewell to the shadowlodge. There are many scenarios, but only one end to the most beloved faction of them all. That one opportunity demanded an awesome finale to go out with a bang, instead it went out with a "Wait.. what?" Writing a good scenario is hard, writing a good end is harder but... wow did this fail in the second regard. Badly. Spoiler:
The characters actions make no sense. Torch could just as easily have said "Hey! thanks for dropping off the spider. See you tomorrow at the union meeting" made the same bluff check and gotten the information out of her with the party heading off to celebrate. Instead he shows his hand, kicks the dog and rips her head off in full view of the party because... reasons? After that, the entire 3 year story arch is summed up with.. oh yeah the 10 helps you get over it. Somehow. There NO idea about how they go about this, what that help entails, never mind that its not actually played out, so its going to be added as an after thought at all. This, even moreso than torches neigh guaranteed escape, takes agency away from the player. There were a few clues that there were something else going on: Torch was wearing clothes and out of the tub, so unless that balm he got from the faction mission in the lantern lodge finale reaaally did the trick, that was out of character for him. There was a doppelganger corpse in the empty room, so it could have been a fake or someone glugging doppleganger blood. A year later though and, as nothing has come of the possibility, I'm going to conclude its bad writing rather than a fiendish plot. Pros: I think the author fixed the chase scene. This one is fun, imaginative, and fixes the problems that plague other chase scenes where some party members just may as well go order a pizza. Good mix of social, skill, and combat encounters This scenario could not have taken place anywhere but in Qadiria and I love that. In a world as diverse as golarion just remembering the adventure should be enough to remember where it took place. Cons: May have had a few too many PCs. Even DMing this I was a little lost as to who was who and had to use a letter from a PC the pcs hadn't interacted with yet. 3 monks and a lady:
The party was a level 1 half orc brawler, level human 1 Monk, and a level 3 Dwarven pouncing master of many styles monstrosity. And a pregen kyra. Al 'hakir summoned the party to chat and head over to the wake. Threw on the excuse that he didn't want a bunch of armed people wandering around scaring his guests, so the monk party was chosen despite their lack of social graces. Krya both fit the theme and had a social skill so.. two for one. The party made ok progress in chatting up the guests. The brawler was running on a strait d20 roll and got a 5... so telmad came off as stiff and unaproachable and refused to shake hands. The dwarf used his dayjob profession to hit it off with his fellow dwarf, Kyra and the human monk took turns rocking theology discussions with the scroll seller. The mummy hit the party pretty hard. Everyone did well on their saves, but the brawler took an aoo to start a grapple followed by a real hit and hot knocked across the room. She hit all of the party at least once before being pummeled back into the coffin, to the horrified gasps of her grandchildren in the back row. It was at this point that i really know nothing of Aaqir al'Hakam. He's always been pretty bland to me and i have no idea what his personality is or how he would react, so i just winged it. He took his daughters downstairs and got them their first (much needed) brandy. None of the "go investigate what happened" hints really hit home with the party, and i think thats a good thing. There's not much to be gained from investigating it and a lot to lose if the party suspects some of the party guests (with good cause, they had enough knowledge religion and sense motive to peg one as a dawnflower cultist and noticed the druma coinage) The party had fun wwfing it up with the zombie apocolypse at their door. They kicked off the zombie heads, smashed them to jelly under furniture, headlocked them till heads popped off, and leg swept them down the banister. Given the dwarf in the party trying to get lucky, they of course made a B line for metella. The assassin thought the pathfinders brought the zombies and called them unclean dogs, and stabbed metella in the kidney but.. well. dwarf. The assasin dropped rather quickly , the zombies took a little time to go down thanks to the lack of slashing hands on the monks. The pathfinders brought the assassin to Aaqir al'Hakam, who started with the idea of tossing him down the well. The party pointed out that wells are valuable commodities in the area, and recommended a termite mound instead. He has brand new scarzini allies for that sort of thing and let them handle it. The party monk made the perception check on the cleric faking it, and then she lost initiative to the entire party. She was prone and within charging range... Punched out by the dwarf and sneak attack grappled by the Brawler she didn't even get to go. Inside: skeletons vs monks. Results as expected. The party did a good job taking down the cleric, so this was a little anti climactic. Shirin was taken back alive, boasted there was nothing the party could do to her, she would soon be with her god no matter what they did! The party suggested chaining her up, so Aaqir stuck a ring of sustenance on her , chained her up, put her in a sarcophagus and put her back in the tomb she'd desecrated. So we have a murder mystery that forgot to put in any details about the victims, 3 seperate tracks determining what happens (time, pitchfork o meter, and opposition track, 25 different modifiers to the investigation culminating in a page and a half of modifiers to the trial.... This is way. WAY too complicated for the transparent illusion that they're not on railroad tracks. I spent almost as much time flipping back and forth looking for the oddly placed modifiers, conditions and pieces of evidence as we did in combat. Spoiler:
The fight in the house with the rogue, which is probably the only fight in the scenario... exactly WHAT is he supposed to be hiding behind? He's a human rogue. He has to be in a well lit area to sneak attack and he needs something to hide behind. The only way i could justify a stealth check after round 1 was with him hiding under the bed. If you have a good DM, play it, it can be a blast. If you're running it, just accept that the overly complicated tracking system is going to be tossed out in about an hour and don't bother with it. Its something that works much better as a loose guideline than mathematical precision. I absolutely love it when a scenario makes such good use of the background that the scenario could only happen in one place, and this definitely does it. There's nowhere else on golarion you could run into such an oddball pairing cast of characters as you do running around this scenario. The fights were fun but nothing crazy hard. Both groups I've run this for have died laughing over the Spoiler: leading to the first fire the entire town wanted to run TOWARDS.
Pot zombies If the scenario had just had some random bad guy it would have been a 5 star. But this is a confrontation with the person trying to kill a faction head thats been building all season. The players have no idea WHY she's trying to do that. If you're running this, be sure to have the Spoiler: toss in few hints, or maybe have them give a party member a potion to send them on a hippy visionquest where they see things through her eyes.
troll diviner Reading this had me constantly wondering if my bookmark had slipped back a few chapters while I dozed off. Wait, weren't they running away and being desperately chased a few pages ago? Oh.. yes they're just at it again. And again. And again. Yes. The mysterious Masked in the mask is mysterious. We know noooothing about him. Or the mysterious guy following him. We got that. Somewhere between the 8th and 12th chase scene. Overall I liked it, but there were more than a few problems. The art was amazing. (I really want to take the poor compsognathus home) The chart is... wow has this been missing for a long time. About time we got something like this. The division of belt into belt and belt (saddle) was new and more than a little arbitrary. The magic item section was the most disappointing. Its barely a page, and most of the items suffer from the usual "its not on the christmas tree so its overpriced" effect. Magical items for critters is almost new ground, i thought they could have done a lot more with this. The collar of obedience seems useful... but by the time you can afford it most of the animals you'd want to use it on are bigger than large, and for some reason unlike every other neck slot item in the game, this one has resizing limits. I love the idea of animal archetypes. More variety is good. The charger seems like a good archetype... but it technically can't do anything as it gives benefits to cavaliers but cavalier mounts can't take it because it replaces an ability they don't have (share spells) The tricks vary. Bombard is absolutely hilarious and probably the best of the lot. There's a few more that have more than a little overlap with already existing tricks, Like watch and guard or perform and entertain. Some seem to be like rogue tricks where they, by implication, limit what you could otherwise have done with another trick by their existence. Absolutely loved the new familiars and animal companions, they really should be as diverse as the adventurers that they own. People seem to love the panda bear, and even if i never take a llamma as an animal companion i rejoice to know that somewhere there's a druid with a llama and profession (weaver) I really really liked this one. I can't recall the last time pathfinders, the gentleman adventurer archeologists, had last done any well... archeology. It was nice to get them into a musty old tomb and get their hands dirty on some real history. The Thing that makes this scenario good rather than amazing is its too busy. There are simply too many things that have happened in the tomb and none of them are all that connected to the crunch. Spoiler:
Four things have happened in the tomb 1) This was where the sages died. 2) This is where grandmaster torch got torched- a seminial event in pathfinder history that has driven the metaplot for multiple seasons. 3) Nefti and Kafar where here last week and swiped the sage jewels. and There's an old dead librarian waiting for an interview in a coffin. So you have an Egyptian tomb, where grandmaster torch was torched... and a Viking shows up and wants to fight you for the right to loot the place. With all of the history to draw on THATS an encounter? I mean you wouldn't even need to change the Vikings' stats, just asign each Viking to be a dead pathfinder. 1 and 2 in particular could easily be tied into the adventure's combat a bit more. The party could have fought the Scarab seekers ghosts/spirits rather than some random dead travelers. Instead of an otherwise really good and thematic haunt, The party could have relived the last days of the sages. Its the culmination of three seasons of grandmaster torches backstory AND a pivotal moment for the osirion faction and they're background to a viking and some random undead. Ok, You're sent to a dinner isn't exactly new for Pathfinder society but what I really liked was the mechanic for talking sense into people using non social skills. This can give the characters/players that normally stay in the corner conversing with the potted plants a chance to contribute to the mission without running the risk of ruining the adventure for the entire group. The combats are scaled back a bit from season 3.5-4, so if your local munchkins are still set on "Nuke it from orbit!" your bad guys might get curb stomped a little fast. Some of the NPCs could use a little more differentiation. It was a bit hard to find the different "voice" for the two heads of the trading cartel. Osirion and Qadiran have always been a little close for me . One thing that the scenario doesn't address is Spoiler:
People trying to gather information on the party members BEFORE hand... which is the first thing that every semi conscious player I've asked has said they'd do with 24 hours to prepare. Three stars for a basic dungeon crawl, +1 for the very fun to role play Otugh, -1 for the final fight Togg is a rare and delicate dessert flower. Spoiler:
The final fight got kind of boring for the players without darkvision. At level 1-3 there's not a heck of a lot they can do about the darkness. On top of that the character get caltroped, so a lot of players would spend 5 minutes waiting for their turn only to spend a full round moving 15 feet in the direction of combat. Spoiler:
There seems like a lot of interesting background in the dungeon with the wererats, but they effectively don't come up in the scenario.
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