 
Sign in to create or edit a product review. The story and content is pretty good, but the actual mechanics and what we actually do was kinda meh. a lot of the lores and languages required to do the things in this scenario is crazy. If i didnt have comprehend languages, we probably would have failed. The decemvirate sent a ton of newbies to do dangerous work to preserve untouched cyclopean information. information in SEALED underground areas, and these people certainly dont have the languages or lores at these levels for such ANCIENT work. Not to mention how everything was literally deteriorating before our very eyes, and you expect a bunch of people with little knowledge or experience to preserve this? And then the ending? what the hell was going on out of nowhere? that sounded like first edition Seeker level content. A decimverate, the supposedly most powerful of mortals, disappearing while fighting a shadow creature or something? It was nice to see the decemvirate show up, but to 1-4s? And them playing good cop bad cop? Building a lodge on top of a 10 THOUSAND year old ruins, right after we open it up letting WHO KNOWS WHAT out? my table was high tier the basilisk fight is too rigged to be too easy or too difficult. the elemental fight was pretty fun. could have used a stronger elemental at the end as a mini boss. the trade negotiations is way too rigged against the pcs overall its ok, but as a repeatable it might not be good. the scalings are way too crazy and a lot of the skill checks are super high. 2e was supposed to be LESS "save or suck" and there are supposed to be more middle grounds. not a hit or miss. the story was great. the mechanics are overtuned. people dont do min maxing fighter groups anymore a good GM makes this a good quest. Someone who likes pirates or cayden calian themed things will do well in this. however it can be possible for it to be a little unfun if done incorrectly or not even roleplaying is done. A little roleplay goes a long way here as long as your players are told that this is a dungeon crawl ahead of time, then it's pretty good. If nobody knows its a dungeon crawl, then it sorta doesnt feel as fun. the final boss is a bit overtuned, or at least my local playstore thinks so, just a little bit. if the ghost could give us some info on him, perhaps in an attempt to get us to set him free, then it might be a little more fair. it can really turn into a "this looks like we're all going to die" situation REALLY fast with him though. Scary fast. My dad ran this for us at home before he ran it at the local playstore. My friend and i played it with just 2 people. We were like team Two House lol except we were Two Casty Bois. Needless to say, casters entirely simplify just about everything. Even 2 players could just about duo the entire scenario and still get first place with almost no changes. The only thing that really changed was that for the bear fight, he used its lowtier hp and high tier damage (of vice versa) and still just us 2 players basically duod it. However we were just a test run so he could get a grasp before the big day at the store with a table of 5 or 6. He said while the scenario claims it has different playstyles, theyre basically the same every time. You only really chose 1 of a handful ways to run it but its essentially the same every time. It was still really fun and a good GM makes it so much more fun. Creative players also make it more fun. Btw when my friend and I played it, while we were both casters, we still did all the challenges/checkpoint things as written and got lucky with almost no hard fails. Another thing to note. Maybe rewrite it a little so that familiars and animal companions can ONLY "AID" you on the challenges. Of course people will go with flying familiars or climbing/swimming familiars/animal companions in society, and those ones just entirely pass some of the challenges. However minions summoned, such as summon fey, shouldnt be disqualified from replacing a player because that's a spellslot being used, a somewhat limited resource, and that's a pretty creative solution to some of them (like getting the bell off of the deer things? i used summon fey 2nd level to summon a Grig which used invisibility and could fly, it went and got the bell. my friend used wild shape (or animal form i think) to turn into one of the deer things and just nibbled the bell off himself lol. these are creative and good examples of spellcasters bypassing something that would otherwise be basically impossible for them to do as written but also doesnt entirely trivialize them, my dad still had us do a stealth and/or thievery check with a small bonus to get the bell by our ways) dont get me wrong, as a repeatable this is great and has lots of good opportunities for roleplay (but not necessary) and is pretty fun. As title, Thod says just about everything that needed being said. pretty good. my local playstore (a pretty big one) would prefer paizo go in the direction of kobolds instead of goblins cuz kobolds are just in general superior in every way possible. but otherwise it's neat. as usual, bad guys need more hp so that fights last longer than 1 or 2 turns wow paizo sure is doing GREAT on the repeatable scenarios. all of the repeatables are done SO well, but the one time plays are rather lacking. pretty good by itself, REALLY good as a repeatable. of course all the fights need a little more scaling. bad guys need more hp still. combats are still over in like 2 turns, much too soon. Edit down 2 stars for removing repeatable. as title, it should be a repeatable. to be able to really enjoy and understand it, this one requires multiple playthroughs. Otherwise it just feels like an "escorting your treasure bundles" scenario. which it was. plenty of decent chances for people to pipe up and do something seperately. end fight needs to be more difficult my local playstore loved that there was a pathfinder recovery mission. we were all happy to see pathfinders taking care of their own and going back to recover those that had unfortunate endings. lots of hints at the real life mothman festival. everyone at my local playstore loved it. more scenarios like this should exist and we all dearly hope that there's more stuff relating to this scenario in the future! spoiler alert below the dragon fight was super scary for even the lowest tier. getting to the dragon was a little weird. might have been from us players failing some checks tho. great story idea though. slap that dragon as an endboss to a 3-6 scenario and change some things, like make it fight to near death or something, and it would be a great fight! it's neat. could be worse for a tier 3-6. not really much of a challenge unless you're playing the absolute HIGHEST tier, THEN it feels like a real 3-6. the beginning is nice, the middle could be worse, the end is good but only if you're playing at highest difficulty. otherwise it has a lot of chances for roleplaying and ingame conversation. Could be better, but definitely could be worse. For society scenarios, we hope they start making things a little harder in general. Such as a 3-6 should be a little hard even on the lowest difficulty. With the new medicine system and there usually being a lot of time inbetween combats to get away with complete party heals (most of the time), combats should be a little harder. I believe there was an optional encounter, i cant remember if it was optional, in a small building with a lot of...i think they were boggards, while it was optional, it was pretty easy for tier 5-6. It is absolutely lovely that almost all statblocks for creatures are included in the scenario AND matching pictures, however scenario structure could still use some more efficient organizing. Instead of placing all the statblocks and pictures at the end, just put them in the middle of the scenario where they belong? For those using the pdfs to conserve paper, it's extremely inefficient, and even those using printed out scenarios still have to flip around constantly. |
