Disciple of the Void's page

I'm finding that Starfinder Society scenarios are either feast or famine when it comes to quality. I enjoyed The First Mandate, but not this one.

First, the fact that PCs and NPCs have different rulesets is ridiculous. That concept alone boggles the mind and is a major detraction from the system. The 24-hour time limit was a good piece of this, as was the infiltration aspect. Once the final encounter started, since we weren't given any preparatory time to heal up and reposition, the extra waves of guards and thugs, as well as the final enemy only didn't turn into a TPK because of time. We had to stop, so we called the scenario. If we had tried to finish the combat, we all would have died.

I can't think of anything we did wrong, except perhaps not roll consistently well on our attacks.

Frankly, the fact that you can't actually build any NPC using strict character creation rules is something I find disgusting.

When I first read through this, I was blown away. This is one of the most elegantly designed dungeons I've ever seen. The combat sections of this don't feel forced. Many scenarios have a combat (or more than one) that feel like they're just there so that players who don't play particularly social characters can have something to fight. This didn't have that. There were some thoroughly hilarious moments at our table because of the design of this dungeon, which were all in-character reactions to the elegant danger present. Everyone had fun, nobody felt slighted, and a good time was had by all.

If I have one critique, it would be the first encounter felt overly complicated, but after that, it was smooth sailing all the way.

I played this on Saturday, October 21 with a level 1, though I was lucky and somehow had a level 2 at the table, but still . . .

From a player's perspective, it was horrendous. Both of the fight sequences were ridiculously overpowered for our level. The damage output and hit bonuses for the NPCs were not scaled to our power level. The only plus, so far as I could tell, was that it was similarly easy for us to hit the NPCs as it was for the NPCs to hit us. Then, from comments our GM made, there were opponents who were lacking stats completely! If this is true, then there needs to be much more proofreading done for these scenarios. That just seems like shoddy work and slapdash effort.

Now, we beat it, and nobody died, though there were a couple of close calls. That being said, I have been informed by many that the focus of Starfinder is trying to steer away from combat. If that's the case, there should have been some way to bypass at least one of the ugly fights through RP or skills.

I would not recommend this scenario to anyone below level 3. Ever. In fact, if I could give it zero stars, I would. I just didn't enjoy it at all.