Sharu

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4/5

An upgrade to the old Space Station flipmat (which was very geometric) and higher resolution on some of the art assets.

The opposite side really doesn't scream 'space station' to me though.


An ending!

3/5

The armada battle was great.

The moon crater fight is way too overtuned with the sharpshooters sniping you from the craters rims.

The finale is a bit of a let down because Minaxoi turns like a bus and it's hard for him to maneuver -- his AC/TL is also very low and he's mainly a damage sponge.

The events after part 2 but before the finale should be skipped as they are misplaced and serve just as speedbumps to the ending and you don't really need the buffs.

The lack of pawns means you are basically on your own for depicting a crystalline purple-black Negative Energy dragon. Sorry!

Overall this six-parter has some problems with it that keep it from being in my top rated series.....the finale is way too abrupt. The "slow burn" of the radiation mystery doesn't work mixed in with the mundane matters of colony administration. I think if the Draeliks had gotten involved a book or two earlier it would have worked better.


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Thematically inappropriate adventure

2/5

This would have been a great eco-friendly AP or stand-alone. I would totally buy an adventure with a bunch of Xenodruids doing some save the whales schtick.

But this is so thematically inappropriate for the general thrust of this AP series. I mean, the first one is called "We're no Heroes". Well the third one should be called "You're Gonna Be Heroes Whether You Like It Or Not".

EJ is played so comically over the top. Your choices are "Side with the People Chucking Kittens into Vats of Drain-O Or Not". And as if to remind you you made the wrong choice, the corp is incredibly cheap about rewarding you if you decide to take their side rather than the side of Shan/Tarika. That's not how you balance things! People do bad things mainly out of financial motivation, not because they're Saturday morning cartoon villains! Bad!

Here's some more bulletpoints on some other questionable design choices:

- A recurring criticism of FFOD is "We STOLE A FREAKING SHIP FROM THESE GUYS, why would we return to Absalom Station to do business?". Well, this AP starts out with you going back to Absalom. And worse, it confirms to the players that Absalom Station is NOT safe by having you ambushed there. Bad!

- Ship encounters are undertuned if you've been doing moderately well at your BP count. You will blow away the Gideron Authority ships, and probably EJ Corp's Negotiator too.

- Too much focus on the Wintermourne's crew. My group is not interested in them other than exchanging banter. The "What are they up to now/how do they feel?" bit is interesting, but they shouldn't have taken up as much page space as they did.

- Terra-5 is interesting, though a bit underwhelming. It's way too easy to "save" the platform. A couple of repairs to the struts and repairing the pump room and closing off some hatches and you're done. I did like the water flooding concepts and would have loved for this to be expanded on in some sort of Poseidon Adventure-esque adventure.

- HIGHLY UNDERTUNED. Low DC's and CR's all over. Nothing was even vaguely threatening about most of them if you're prepared for underwater combat. I think I had someone maybe fail one check.

- Side jobs are location-specific. If you're not on Absalom Station, you can't take the second or third jobs. Well, if the second job is appropriate for 6th level why would I be in the Golarion system when I did it? Unless I've gone completely off-script?

- Great art from Pixoloid Studios and Tomasz Chistowski.


Chapter 3 is a jarring mess

3/5

Tondro AP's tend to be a bit unwieldy and unnecessarily long.

There are a litany of issues with this AP.

- Hamfisted solution to the problem of no positive healing introduced at the beginning of the AP. No ritual entry or anything to explain why this hilariously game-breaking ritual that gives you negative healing can't be exported to any other AP.

- In part 2 there's an enemy that's literally weak to Area of Effect and Salt 5. You fight it in the ocean.

- Some copyediting errors with one of Haldoli's henchwomen. Glorinsa was a human in book 1 and is a skeleton in book 2. What changed?

- Chapter 3 is a mess. It's neither an interesting narrative-driven chapter or an interesting setpiece map. I would have preferred they go either all one direction or the other. Unfortunate because it's a pretty unique location. Slows the AP to a crawl.

- A lot of the chapters in general have that Tondro sense of taking too long to get to the point. It made me miss Starfinder where because pagecount is at a premium the authors have to keep things nice and tight and moving.

- Faction reputation still has no clear utility. I'm hoping that it will start becoming pertinent in book 3.

- I did like the inclusion of Pharasmans as enemies.

- In Chapter 4, there's a ritual that the last hag can use against you. But it requires your blood. There is no explanation where the hag would acquire your blood and as far as I can tell it just went unnoticed.

- Wraiths are used throughout the book. Why? They only do negative damage and since your characters (who would be stupid NOT to take the negative healing ritual offered) heal through negative damage, there's no danger.

- The Vampire Pub Crawl was great. But...

- My group wound up bypassing the office and the necromancer academy (which is okay!) and going straight to the townhouse of the hag. The ending was a bit of a let-down, again 3 wraiths which are not a threat to anyone who now has negative healing -- mummy rot COULD be an issue depending on how your GM rules? You can bypass the ettin in the basement and not miss anything - leading to a pretty weak final encounter.

Of the three Hags, I think Sahni was the most dangerous because you fight her in a phone booth with two angry ghoul gators. She also has Crashing Wave, which is a pretty brutal level 3 spell that does 6d6 damage and she can cast it 3 times!

Nathnelma is arguably the easiest of the 4 hags, with Decrosia being contextually difficult. Arguably if played as written, Decrosia sabotages her own encounter by defenestrating herself away from her Azmakian Effigy bodyguard!


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Dry and too academic

3/5

I really have been wanting to add this to my shelf for a long time. But I think it does Ustalav a disservice.

It is far too dry a text. Towns and cities are listed in order, with nothing really linking them together. Same with the history of Ustalav. I think an editor really could have just chopped this stuff up and summarized it without a lot of the flowery prose associated with it.

A good location splat should answer several questions, and do them in order:

1. Where's it located?
2. What's its relations with its neighbors?
3. Who's in charge?
4. If nobody's in charge, who are the big movers and shakers?
5. What cities and landmarks are relevant to a GM?


Overtuned

3/5

Not sure why this is getting 5-star botted. It has some issues.

Anyways -- it's an okay intro. Berline Haldoli is a standout NPC. But the bank is a real death-trap. Very dangerous. The last fight with the haunt involved can also be very hard if you don't knock out the cauldron immediately.

Things that can happen at the farm
- Murder cow. Yes, you're warned about it. But they also put it RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, like the second thing you encounter.

Things that can happen at the bank
- Summoning rune that brings forth a CR 3 Cockatrice
- Petrification (from the cockatrice)
- CR 4 zombie horde that is I think one size too large
- Bone landslide trap that will probably insta-kill you at level 2
- Haunt with a very high DC

Things that can happen at the Crooked Whatever
- Ghoul Fever
- TPK at the last encounter

A+ art on this one. Geb's architecture is something else. Love how it feels halfway between Mesoamerican architecture and Dio De Los Muertos.

Some things failed to land for me, like the Arghun the Annihilator hand.

The bank was so frustrating that we nearly dropped the AP. Tight corridors, no real opportunities for strategy or bypass - just a lethal grind. At level 2 it will clobber you senseless. Consider giving the group level 3 before the bank, even though that's not what the AP recommends.

Hoping the next one is a little less combat-grindy.


4/5


4/5

Prevents delays when gaming in-person


Visual Candy

5/5

I thought this was going to be a bad splat that would hem in GM's with ideas about Golarion that I don't necessarily agree with but they've taken a surprisingly light hand with that.

What's left is a visual feast of examples as well as small cultural fragments that you can insert into a game to liven it up or introduce character details. There is a LOT of art in this book, and it reads like one of those old Star Wars cross-section books for those of us who were into the technical details.

The section on Magic with the intricate runic circle design details I thought was great, and the map of weather patterns in the Inner Sea was similarly really well thought out.


Ambush after ambush after ambush after ambush after ambush......

3/5

The ghost encounter in the bunker at the beginning was okay. My group came up with the amusing image of carrying around the bones of the widow to her husband/children's remains.

The meat of this AP, going around the colonies and doing chores for them so they'll help you out (for what appears to be little mechanical benefit, a +1 to negotiation with the Pact Worlds?) is rather tedious busywork. The meeting with the Pact Worlds is just as tediously bureaucratic as it sounds. The meeting with the Vesk general was fun, but again, by that point when they heard that he had gone out into the cold alone and they'd have to rescue him they almost went "Eff this, get back to us when he comes back".

The cinematic moment halfway through the AP where Bedymm blows a colonist's brains out right in front of you was very well written, but I could sense my players were frustrated they felt like they were watching a cutscene and had no chance to intervene. I could sense they were ready to yell "OKAY, WE GET IT, HE'S EVIL, CAN WE PLEASE JUST KILL HIM NOW?!". They were fully aware it was a trap when they entered and they mostly marvelled at how dumb the enemy crew was inviting 4 heavily armed murderhobos aboard without trying to disarm them.

THEN they wanted to try and carve their way through the ship full of enemies rather than escape (I know, the AP says "this is an option" but should have done more to discourage it -- they only gave up the scheme when they realized 4 people can't pilot a cruiser)

The cruiser ship encounter can kill a player ship if it's not optimized -- that superlaser will shred through most CR 10 ships at this level. They barely got away by the skin of their teeth, which somewhat compensated for how easily they got away from the "trap".

After that it's just ambush after ambush after ambush after ambush after ambush and it gets a little ridiculous. One of my players actually muttered "Oh, son of a *****" after the last ambush at the end of the AP because by that point they had been "surprised" by an attack about 4 times.

The ambush at the end is a great setpiece. The ambushes before that are undertuned. In fact, a lot of this AP came across as undertuned to me. Just lots of encounters that get the crap kicked out of them, never really stood a chance against the group.


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Doesn't quite stick the landing

4/5

The first part of this AP is poorly placed and sucks all of the momentum out of the finale like an oxygen-starved fire.

First, it's a railroad. All it takes is one savvy player saying "Through the airlock? No, that's what they're expecting" and blowing a hole in the hull instead and you're suddenly answering questions if you pull this trick on them.

The unblockable "Sorry you all fall unconscious, are taken prisoner, and put in VR" thing in the intro also will rub players the wrong way.

Finally it's asking a lot of the players to pretend to be brainwashed Sivv who don't know who they are after 2 AP's worth of participation - this is the kind of mystery you create at the beginning of an AP arc (like Threefold Conspiracy), not at the end. I barely felt motivated to even PRETEND like they were all Sivv other than changing their icons.

Finally - the passage of time. The AP says that the party is captured for several days ---- What was the assembled Pact Worlds fleet doing this whole time, getting coffee?!?!

This AP appears to have been written in a complete vacuum, not even acknowledging what had transpired in the past. There's no contact with anyone on the outside! Did the fleet battle just last several days? Good question. This adventure doesn't even bother trying to answer it!

The vexatious part of all of this is that we already have a blueprint for how to board a super-colossal dreadnought class ship -- all the way back in Dead Suns 6!

In my opinion the whole thing should either be done as a series of narrative beats, no dice rolls, just roleplaying vignettes -- or skipped entirely.

The rest of the AP plays out pretty conventionally and is a suitable ending. But man, that first part is just a gigantic speedbump that breaks the perfect flow that the 2nd AP had.


4/5


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K-O-G map good, Hellknight map bad

3/5

The Knight of Golarion Shieldcraft/Javelin map looks really good - has clearly delineated sections for various things, high detail, each part of the map looks like it has a purpose and the bottom looks like, if not a bridge, at least a Combat Information Center (CIC) adjacent to the bridge.

The Hellknight ship on the other hand, first of all has a kind of dried-blood/rusted metal red look to it, which I don't feel is appropriate (would have preferred bright reds) but also seems to lack any coherency.

There's living quarters on the north end which are rather spartan. Okay. There's a security desk in front of the living quarters for some reason? And the centerpiece is....I don't know what it's supposed to be, a Helldrive I guess? But it looks like a vampire's coffin. Finally there are two non-descript consoles in the bottom left and bottom right areas that don't clearly go to anything.

The Hellknight map unfortunately has a lot of negative space which wasn't utilized properly. I get the intent (confining corridors versus the open space of the Shieldcraft) but in practice it results in a lot of wasted space and no chance to show off what makes the Hellknights distinct from the other side of the map. I would have liked a more gothic and complicated styling to this ship deck design.


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Varied content, useful for GMs and players.

4/5

Only criticism is I would have preferred that the content be organized by subject. The latter half of the book seems to be organized adventure->feats->items, adventure->feats->items, adventure->feats->items, adventure->feats->items, adventure->feats->items, adventure->feats->items, which makes it annoying to try and look up exactly what you're trying to find.


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No notes - a great AP

5/5

Much like the last one, I don't have much feedback on this one. It runs real smooth.

A few things:

1. The conference has a bit of jank to it. It acts like there's some complicated things you can do to suss out various delegates, but all you get for sussing them out is a +2 to a flat DC 29 check that you have to pass. Which, when you have skill bonuses in the mid-20's basically means it's 50/50 already. Ultimately the political conference comes down to a set of flat DC checks to encourage them to push forces where they need to go, and then a single set of 4 checks again to see if they get mauled again or not. I roleplayed things out a bit, having bickering delegates, and making the characters try and persuade rather than have flat checks like a real war council.

2. If they're called Contractor Devils in the statblock, don't write a "Summon Creature" spell that calls them Tchorugons. Confusing!

3. If the strategic battle layer seems janky, consider doing armada combat instead. (I thought it was pretty good)

4. The airlock at the end should be moved to the beginning of AP 3


Great idea - needs some GM prep

3/5

There were a few events where I was shuffling papers and uhhh'ing.

- Event 2: My group jumped straight to the end and tried to sleight of hand the datapad. They even had some good ideas, like remote hacking the lights and stealing the datapad in the confusion. I had no real comeback except "because you can't" to that. Giving me a base DC that was really high (like 30) and then saying they could lower it to 20 if they buttered him up might have helped

- Event 3: Royce's Cronies are CR 2 but they use a statblock of a CR 1 pirate from Pact Worlds.

- Chase Scene: The pilots of the Enercycles are not listed for the chase scene. So I wasn't clear on what check I needed to roll for the enercycles in the chase.


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Loved it. Ran it pretty much straight through.

5/5

There are a few small things but I don't think they bring the AP down that much.

Oliphaunt isn't rules-legal - I actually turned this into a plot point. The group engineer took one look at the power core and grumbled that "...they were trying to save money by putting in a power core that can't do the job". So the first thing they had to upgrade on the ship was the power core or else the weapons wouldn't work.

Side-Jobs - Loved them. Not much else to say.

Choices - I appreciated that you didn't -have- to get all the BP payouts and that they were on a sliding scale. So screwing up earlier in the AP might mean you have to be a hardass later.

Interesting Encounters - My group especially enjoyed the Defrex herding in part 2 and the Stormdiving in part 3. The only part that I personally felt was underwhelming was the Stridermander encounter at the end of part 2.

Adamant Talon - Vesk Ninjas. What's not to love?


Short, not really Planar/Hell-related, and not really Crash-related?

4/5

Note: My players and I were divided on this one. I call it a 3/5 due to the bait and switch, but they really enjoyed it and probably would give it a 4.5 so I'm splitting the difference with a 4.

In Starfinder AP #46, Paizo is experimenting with something that rarely works out well - time travel and alternate realities.

Make no mistake -- you go to Hell for just long enough to fill up the gas tank before you're back out in a bunch of crazy stuff -- I have some small criticisms with the copy but the big issue is this: Nothing you do matters. You go to a mirror universe and then the future -- two settings that don't amount to a hill of beans when it comes to leaving lasting impacts on Starfinder.

These are well worn Star Trek tropes - emphasis on the worn. Part of the problem was encapsulated by the constant use of the tropes in Star Trek: Voyager, where brutal things would happen to the crew only for things to be tied up with a little bow at the end in the form of a reset button that turned everything back to status quo. It's a reason that Ronald D. Moore hated working on it and left to work on the now-famous Battlestar Galactica.

Plus time travel raises tons of questions. Can deities see through time? If you kill a soul in the future, but you're from the present, "when" does Pharasma judge it? Now-ish? Or in the future? Vexing metaphysical issues ahead!

Overall, this AP has a very brisk pace to it, and is slightly under-tuned. I was able to knock this out with a party of 4 in about 3 sessions of 5-6 hours each. Don't expect the provided NPC's to be really memorable. Populating your ship with NPC's is almost a must -- especially if you have someone who's missing a critical skill like Computers or Engineering. A Mechanic or Operative is almost mandatory.

On to the nitpicky details:

- Knights of Golarion. The NPC's don't wear heavy armor? They all wear Estex Suits. Kind of odd, especially given the art direction. Some flavor text explaining they live in a crapsack world where you can't easily get heavy armor might have been useful, or maybe designated them as "Squires" or "Pages" -- ineligible to wear heavy armor.

- Player ship starts out statblocked at tier 3 but the AP assumes you've got a tier 1 ship to start (it mentions upgrading your ship to tier 2 after a starship combat on page 19). Maybe I missed something here, but if I don't have a tier 1 ship, what am I supposed to do, make one from scratch? What's the point of the inner cover statblock for the player ship then? I started out the encounter with a CR 3 ship.

- The Dopplegangers are something that requires buy-in or a lot of creativity. I was able to create the statblocks in a hurry but it's definitely something that could be skipped. Alternately it could wind up a TPK....sneaking up on characters and killing them in their sleep without their heavy armor is a dangerous plot move!

- AP is undertuned after the battle at the beginning of the AP. The second part can either be super easy if you're stealthy or difficult if you murderhobo your way through it. You can faceroll through the third part just mindlessly rolling d20's and d6's.

- To get the most out of this AP you definitely need 3-4 NPC's on the crew to perform essential functions if necessary. As I said above, mechanic/tech operative is a necessity. Lots of engineering checks.

- It says that the glitch gremlins cast holographic image on someone in the party and graffiti up their armor as a prank -- the shortened stat block probably should've also mentioned this requires all four glitch gremlins. I glanced at their spell list and was very confused until I read the fine print at the bottom.

- The linkage to the Drift Crisis as a whole only occurs at the end of the AP when you realize what the Hell (no pun intended) happened the same way the Terminator explains what happens to John Connor in Terminator 2. Not the best form of exposition. I prefer explosition.

- Someone REALLY likes the Wizard of Oz. You'll know it when you read it.

In summary - with the right party makeup (I had a Desnan on the crew, so she is fangirling out right now) this is a great AP. I think it should have been labelled the "Desnan" AP since she factors heavily into it. And I like Desna! But anybody expecting this to be a cool planar romp will be disappointed. Paizo, you used up your "One time travel/alternate reality AP" ticket. Don't abuse it.


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Essential for a GM Stepping Outside the Box

5/5

Relic weaponry is my favorite thing about this book - really allows you to personalize weapons or equipment for story purposes.


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5/5


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4 stars due to some small formatting quibbles

4/5

I think I preferred how the 3-parter organized things. Flipping a few pages ahead and looking at important NPC's and their motivations, as well as reading their full stat block is easier on a 2 page spread than being integrated into the body of the adventure itself.


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Atmosphere is everything. And an AP having a plot is not a railroad.

4/5

Obligatory reminder that most people who complain about railroading do not know what railroading is.

If your group are pampered brats who always expect to win, this starter AP is going to make them incredibly mad. I see so many groups coming up with schemes to try and 'win' this AP. This is the Kobiyashi Maru and you are NOT Kirk (and even then, he cheated). Take your lumps in-character and get over it or find a new AP. But if your group are a bunch of crybabies, then just skip parts 1-2 and go straight to part 3 -- seriously, do NOT get sidetracked trying to come up with ways for them to win parts 1-2. Not only is it thematically not appropriate for the mood trying to be conjured, but you're going to wind up sidetracked. The point is to hijack the ship. That's it. How you get there is irrelevant if you want to come up with your own ideas.

4 stars.

Probably would've been higher but the first 2/3rds of the adventure can be very swingy and lethal. That junkbot at the beginning gets a 2d6 breath weapon with no delay between hits and a slam that does 1d6+5. It will murder you. The Graviton Solarian after that can lay out a party of 4 if the dice go against you.

"Good work," Jackie said, grabbing a cup of coffee from a nearby machine she kept in the cockpit, "I'll take us down. Go wake up the other two, would you?" She asked while sitting down, drinking and finally getting the ship prepared to land while getting permissions to land from ground control. She flipped but button that would alert the crew that re-entry was soon...

"BD514, this is Qabarat Ground Control. Be advised that Tropical Storm Daerunia is currently 30 miles off the coast and it is currently 100% precipitation. Begin your approach along heading 090...."

Jackie comm'd back over to them, "This is BD514, we read you, coming along at heading 090. Thank you." Then flipped her A1 switch, "This is your captain speaking..." Jackie trailed off, like pilots did in old trids. "We are preparing for reentry. We know you had little choice in taking this s~#@ty job but appreciate you not complaining, Thank you." She clipped off.

The VI honked at Jackie and a small receipt was printed off a printer nearby. "5 credits have been deducted from your salary for violating workplace codes against profanity."


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5/5


Granular - maybe TOO granular?

4/5

This book is a mouthful, that's for sure. And I'd say it's for two kinds of people: Hardcore fans and theatre kids who never leave Absalom.

It honestly reminds me of Shadowrun's Seattle sourcebooks - an excellent deconstruction, neighborhood by neighborhood, with all the important locations. However whereas Seattle/New Seattle were tailored towards locations that might be of interest to a certain type of person (shadowrunners) this is just a blanket treatment of the city - almost like more of an atlas/tourists guide to Absalom than anything else.

Unfortunately it reads like a phone book - and that's great, if that's what you're angling for. I think I prefer Owen K C Stephens style over this personally. But if you do anything in Absalom, it's certainly worth picking up.

I would have liked to have seen more than four pages about the outskirts -- Absalom the City is very well charted and travelled, especially with the six part AP Agents of Edgewatch. But Absalom the country remains regrettably poorly plotted. Not even Otari gets a shout-out, and that's been the location of at least three adventures, one of which is the most popular PF2 adventure so far. When your supposed atlas to a country says "See the beginner box for info about this town!" that's a cash-grab.


More useful than Lost Omens Legends.

3/5

I would have liked to have seen more lower level "monsters of myth". The Sandpoint Devil and Spring Heeled Jack were the only ones included. Alternately putting statblocks for the "Spawn of _________" might have fulfilled the same purpose - giving lower level parties something to fight.

If you don't get above level 10, this book is of limited utility sadly.


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