This entire adventure path is "Bad things happen to you every job, and someone will betray you every time you turn around.
The players need to decide before they start how far their reactions to this can diverge before the game stops being fun.
By book 6, one player was murdering every person who betrayed us, non combatant or not (to be fair, they had been conspiring to kill us, so they weren't exactly innocent.) and another player was trying to only kill people who were actively shooting us, and the game eventually fell apart.
Also, make sure your players *know* when doing a smart thing lets them avoid a fight. Even if that means having "cut away" scenes showing shadowy figures waiting for them where they were not going. Without that, by the end of the 5th book, (or possibly even with that) it just felt like we just automatically failed whenever the adventure wanted something dramatic to happen.
With the new updated version I am updating my review.
This is rapidly becoming a favorite of mine. The wonderful characters to play in the scrolls trial, the massive variety of solutions in the spells trial, the changes to the swords trial and the rest of the scenario that brought the characters and their motivations in line with the sort of society someone would *want* to work with. This is an excellent redo.
With the new factions, the Pathfinder society has largely moved from using their agents as disposable pawns and lackeys to supporting them as valued fellow explorers.
Apparently however the Deans of the pathfinder college are of the old school, and engage in *outright* hazing of the PCs.
The spells challenge was entertaining, and instructive. The scrolls challenge was a good test and teaching experience, the swords challenge devolved into outright hazing, and the final encounter was simply unacceptable from any agency that wants to develop the trust of their agents.
While the story is interesting enough, and 3 of the 4 social NPCs are interesting, the encounters are wholly inappropriate for a 1-4 scenario, especially in the 1-2 tier. Let alone for something advertised as a good scenario for beginners.
Spoiler:
A CR 3, fine swarm has *no* place in something that was designed to be played by a party of 4 brand new PCs or pregens. Even assuming they had grenades or spells, 40 hp means that the party has to somehow deal 28 damage. That just isn't reasonable.
Then a CR *6* encounter? Against 2 creatures that are closer to CR 5 than CR 4? With confusion, in a tight space?
No, even with the Deus ex Machina rescue, that was completely unreasonable. And a Deus Ex as someones first experience of organized play is a sure fire way to ensure they feel like their character is useless, non viable, and never come back.
And none of this even begins to address the failure to commit to the realities of
Spoiler:
environmental hazards. If you are going to stick people in situations where they activate their environmental protections, then you cannot include descriptive elements that cannot penetrate enviromental protections!
I am highly disappointed in Paizo and the Organized play team.
While it is easily possible to run these each in under an hour, it is a huge waste to do so. There is so much atmosphere and flavor that it would be more fun to just take an afternoon and relish them.
We did not get to epicenter, but will be playing that next thursday.
character choice
Spoiler:
Area affect damage is the bane of many of these quests. Yoon and Kyra between them wiped out almost everything except in university.
Make sure at least one player has some knowledge skills, or a *lot* of background will get lost.
