Monkhound's page

I ran this one during the weekend for a 4 player party in the low tier.

Setting
Alright, the stakes are high, the location is cool, the tone is dark, and the artwork used in the scenario is great. I'd recommend showing the picture on page 15 when REDACTED and it becomes visible.

Skill challenges
The skill challenges are well designed and don't require any mechanics explanation to the players, which is especially good given the length of the scenario.

Combats
The combats are definitely not trivial, but the party should have the tools to be able to solve this. Some additional clarification for dealing with one of the hazards, and a Size correction for one of the encounters might be in order though. The final boss is a piece of work, and yes: As mentioned, the stakes are high!

Detractions
- The scenario easily takes 5-6 hours, despite attempts to speed things up
- Depending on the players, absorbing the information of the (toned down) Mythic rules may take long. In addition, formal clarification is needed on whether or not to use Hero Points in the scenario. My opinion is now to not hand them out, since Mythic Points replace Hero Points, but to still allow players to hand out the ones that are campaign rewards (i.e. from Glyphs)
- An encounter in a room where the enemies take up 100% the space just doesn't work
- I think the CP scaling for encounter B might be a bit off when you have 4 players with 14 CP. This was utterly brutal for the party precisely because of the scaling

All in all, I really enjoyed running this scenario. The length of the scenario combined with the detractions mentioned above knock it down to 4 stars.

Perspective: I ran this low tier for a party of 3 level 7 players and one level 5 (14 CP).

The good
I'm very happy to see more Numeria scenario's, and this one presents an good story and an excellent setup and atmosphere. The alien-ness and the encounters are very well flavored to the setting.

The problematic
There are however a few major issues that lead me to considering this a problematic scenario:
- I'm happy to see the subsystem used in the first part of the scenario, and even though I think the DC's are fine, the required skill set is just far too narrow. I do think there are non-negligible odds where a small party simply cannot progress due to not having anyone trained in one or two of the "must have" skills for this challenge.
- I think the stats of the basic combat encounters are fine, even though they have some issues. Where I'm under the impression that the combats fail, is whith the CP adjustments: I'm not sure the adjusted encounter budgets are spent in a way that makes the combats more interesting, as the defenses of the creatures are just too low to make the combats last longer than a single round.
- The map for the second part of the scenario is cool, but impractical for the encounters that are meant to be had there. You just can't reasonably place Large size creatures on a five-foot hellscape.

The bad
What I'm most disappointed about is related to the creature stat blocks and the chronicle:
- There are multiple glaring errors in stat blocks.

- Many creatures get a "Variant" of an existing creature together with a Rare rarity tag, where the only difference is comparable to an Elite template. This just feels like an arbitrary +5 DC increase to Recall Knowledge on top of the already increased DC for increased creature level. So I'm not talking about creatures with Numeria-specific alterations, since those are rare enough to warrant the tag.
- The chronicle has incorrect prices for the unlocked items.

Not much to say really: Great setting, good combats, interesting story (and by now the start of a reasonably long scenario chain).

A straightforward and slightly challenging module. I think it's a decent showcase of what Pathfinder 2E has to offer, though a Remaster version of the pregens (including assigning a missing feat here and there) would be cool.

This one runs que fast, but it has cool encounters and amazingly written pregens. 2 thumbs up!

Perspective: GM'd this at high tier (19 CP)

Story wise, this is a worthy successor to Lost on the Spirit Road. The situation and feel of the situation are alien (slightly creepy) and well-described.

Even though the combats are somewhat on the easy side (to be expected in a 1-4 tier scenario nowadays), they are interesting and varied. It's easy enough to setup the encounters to be challenging, without immediately becoming utterly deadly.

The skill challenge subsystem used is easy to understand for the GM, and doesn't require sharing any mechanics with the players. This gets a huge "Thumbs Up!" from me.

All aspects regarding replayability are thought out well and very well implemented: I honestly experience this as a breath of fresh air compared to more recent replayable scenarios.

Perspective: Player, low tier 16 CP

Story wise this was interesting, and it was already set into motion during season 5. I'm curious to see what's going on here, though I'm not sure I like it.

Combat wise, the fights were not very interesting. Particularly the last fight makes use of a creature that should not be there at the level 1-2 subtier, ever, regardless of CP.

Mechanics wise, the GM described the part between the first and second combat as confusing. Also forcing at least 1 PC to sit out a whole combat should not be considered when writinga scenario: It works in movies and series, but not in a tabletop RPG, as you rob these players of a chance to have fun. Finally, basically have multiple scenes back to back without a chance at downtime is fine at higher levels, but for low level (and especially intro) scenarios, this is just not fun.

Skill wise, I like it: The DC's seemed reasonable and well spread out.

Perspective: I ran this in low tier for 5 players at 18 CP.

Lore & Flavor
First off, I really like the flavor pesented in the scenario. The whole Godsrain messes up peoples and cultures everywhere, but the impact in Rahadoum was always going to cause a powderkeg situation.

Skills
Perspecive: I love both running and playing skill challanges.
In this case I like the way everything is setup, and I've mostly managed to convey what is requested. Yet I think this part is what's mostly going wrong in the scenario, and it has to do with the expectations that players have of skill challenges. The skill DC's seem to generally be on the high side (with a few extreme+++ DCs out there), which means odds are that players are going to fail the skill challenges. The players don't know anything about the impact of failing such challenges, so as a result I'm afraid this will cause unnecessary stress and maybe even resentment towards the scenario. To be totally honest: This scenario needs some assistance from OPM in the GM Discussion thread.

Subsystems
I think it's conceptually one of the simpeler and more elegant implementations of the

subsystem I've seen, and the rewards for it are a more interesting than the standard your subtier potions that you often get. But as has been pointed out by others, the system is substantially harder with 5 players due to the amount of required vs available checks. I was also missing some DC's for the 'standard' skills within the stat blocks of some of the NPC's.
The other subsystem was interesting, but I felt it was badly phrased, leading to some confusion. The way it was written leads me to think the scenario (or at least this part?) was originally not intended to be a replayable one.

Combats
The way the encounters are setup rather interestingly, but the enemy stat blocks are missing some crucial information. I like the concept of the enemies, but what makes them cool is also their main drawback: Due to the way they are built, the combats can be a slog-fest without a heavy hitter. At the same time, religiously inclined classes get punished extremely harshly for playing. I like resilient enemies as much as the next person, but this is a bit too much, and because of this the scenario may run long.

Content warning
I understand the content warning, and I agree with other posters: This has nothing to do in a repeatable scenario. I also feel like the action that leads to it does not match the lore-wise explanation that is given in the briefing, so the whole action also feels unnecessary to me.

Humour
I had a really good laugh about the salutation part in Handout #1: It nearly beats Zarta's old PF1 letters.

Summary
All in all I'm neither negative nor entirely positive about the scenario. It has a lot of potential, but it also has some serious issues that are not being addressed, which I find a shame for what we pay for scenario's nowadays. I would only trust this scenario in the hands of an experienced PF2 GM.

Perspective: Played this at high tier (bard 6, oracle 4, summoner 6, psychic 6, Valeros 5 and Ezren 5)

Combats & hazards
Most combats and hazards went pretty easy due to a few good rolls on our side and a well-working party composition. Our BBEG fight was very challenging and had us scrambling with Valeros cutting through the party like butter.

Skills
The skill challenges are nice and varied, without any mechanics that shouldn't have been there.

Flavour & Lore
The theme is communicated very clearly and very quickly: This used to be the Worldwound, and the descriptions and lore remind you of that in a good way. Make of that what you will. Don't miss out on the warning for season 6!

All-in-all, this scenario reminded me of the PFS1 scenario Thralls of the Shattered God, which is one of the best dungeon delves I've played. This scenario does a very good job and feels like a worthy spiritual successor of that one. Kudos on this scenario!

Perspective: Played it low tier (alchemist 7, barb 7, barb 8, cleric 8, witch 9, swashbuckler 7)

The positive side
+ The alienness of Jalmeray is always a nice thing, and the descriptions of the rooms are very evocative and done excellently!

The mixed bag
+/- The combats are cool and challenging, but really mean-spirited (bordering on the ridiculous). Encountering creatures with such high defenses and the potential to damage the whole party round after round is really stretching the creature level and the encounter budget. But basically every creature having both a high AC and all high saves meant that our four martials had trouble hitting, and casters were consistently facing successes and crit successes against their spells and hexes. Another consequence of all these high numbers was that applying conditions was borderline impossible (except for Off Guard due to flanking).

The negative side
- As mentioned by other reviews, the Pathinder Society is the bad guy here. This is some CIA-level illegal breaking and entering situation to steal information from a citizen of another country without any clear consent from the local government. The greater good does not justify this in any means, and I strongly feel that this should be avoided in future scenarios if the PFS.

- Please simplify the explanation of puzzles: If GM's don't understand them, they can't explain them to their players. Also being able to completely bypass one with a simple check has a weird effect on tension and immersion.

- Please don't use flipmats from modules (spoilers, availability)... The Noble Estate or even Pathfinder Lodge flipmats exist, and would have fit just as well.

Edit to add: Despite the mixed bag and the negatives, we did have a good time!

Story wise, this scenario continues where we left off in the Safa storyline. It leads us to the magical island of Jalmeray, which is portrayed really well, and the NPC's are evocative. I think the combats could have been interesting but we could talk our way out of them (which is good and makes sense story wise).

Unfortunately that's kind of where the positive feedback ends for me:
1) The Influence mechanics implementation is better than some previous instances I've experienced, but they feel so useless here. Please Paizo, stop shoehorning subsystems when they're not really adding anything to the story: It only manages to reduce their value.

2) We're basically getting to puzzle our way to new information about a specific target (revealed at the end of the previous story), yet we're somehow expected to (without cause) dive head first into a side-plot that reveals itself halfway-through to be the main plot of the scenario, that not even barely manages to announce itself at all.

I'm a bit disappointed in this one: The whole Safa storyline was really cool up to now. Sadly this scenario comes over as filler content just so you can kind of dramatically reveal at the end who was actually our quarry. Just... Meh... :(

I like this one: It has fun(ny) encounters without falling into the slapstick trap, as has been the case with too many recent scenarios. I have a few question marks with regards to the actual replayability since the choice of encounters is largely dictated by player choice, but in general it's a well thought-out and developed scenario.

Note that I especially like the "alternative" final encounter a lot, even though the scaling within the tiers seems to heavily favour being in the higher Challenge Point regions of the said tier. The main inconvenience of the setup is that you have to make it clear to the players that it is a skill challenge that uses very varied skills (instead of only the obvious one). Even then, I think most people will veer towards the combat option, despite the alternative being really well set-up.

Good marks again for Mikko!

Played this yesterday in the high tier (26 CP).

The flavour clearly showcases Ustalav in an unmistakable way: The huge and depressing 19th century Transylvanian countryside, combined with the second wave of industrial revolution experiments. Love that.

The story is an interesting investigation, where you're trying to understand what is going on, what has happened, with the help or hindrance of interesting the NPCs.

The combats are cool: The "experiment gone wrong" encounter was nicely set-up (though weird), and in all combats Recall Knowledge really paid off (Knowledge Domain cleric), giving an idea on how to deal with some of the creatures.

Reusing this map for the mansion makes sense given the location, but I agree with others that it's a bit overused. The inside doesn't really match the description we get from the boxtext anyway, so it could just as well have been Noble Estate or another less used map.

All in all we had a good time, though it ran long.

First off, I did enjoy both playing and running this scenario. It has amazing flavor, but there are some challenges to overcome.

The pros
- The flavor is amazing. The whole presentation of the surroundings is highly evocative and feels like it dips strongly into the pirate and carribean themes
- The NPC's are cool, and their artwork is fantastic
- In advance you can surmise the general theme of the encounters that you're going to face, but they all still manage to surprise and to pack quite a punch
- That BBEG is a seriously mean and terrifying piece of work. Both Loved and hated it :D
- The metaplot storyline implications are interesting and cool

The cons
- As a player I still have to come to terms with the whole "not all undead are evil", and I know from playing that I'm not alone in this. I'm definitely not opposed to the concept, so I do not hold this against the scenario: As previously stated, I loved the flavor that was presented. The reason that I add this as a negative, is that the GM does not get any handhold or suggestion to help champions, clerics or even plain followers of a deity to work with this (Pharasma is a Core20 deity that has an edict to destroy undead, even in the Remaster). A sidebar with a few suggestions would have helped
- The whole investigation and dungeon crawling felt too obvious, and it does not really support very obvious player actions such as wanting to interview the NPC's, or wanting to gather information about them. I undersdtand GM freedom allows a lot, but suggestions would have been welcome
- The scenario runs long (ran it in 6 hours while skipping one encounter, and without any downtime or 'slow play'). It felt to me like the dungeon crawling part alone could be a scenario.

All in all
Despite the challenges, I did enjoy the scenario and I wouldn't mind running it again. Finally, I'm curious where this is leading to.

My expectations surged high when the module was announced as soon as I saw the author (very good memories from Thralls of the Shattered Gods!). I enjoyed prepping this one immensely, and had absolute fun running it.

Prep
Everything is where you expect it to be. The mechanics are pretty standard, and the monsters are cool. With the remaster rules there is something to convert when it comes to alignment damage, but that's relatively easy.

Story
The lore ties well into the New Thassilon lore and all the chaos that came with it. The story is pretty cool, and the stakes are reasonably high.

Mechanics
The backgrounds that come with the scenario feel a bit bland at first sight, but they all provide skills that are practical to have for the adventure (also just add a fitting Lore skill to the one background that is missing one).
The custom monsters from this scenario are super cool and I would love to see them more often in PFS.
Mechanically, everything is all relatively straightforward. What stood out for me was that the hazards are well thought out, and they are a very good introduction of what you will come across during an adventuring career. My only minor gripe was that the final boss encounter becomes too easy if the players "do everything correctly".

Combats
The encounters are reasonably smart, and some can be diplomanced, but all combat encounters are interesting. The variation in types of encounters is very well thought out (barring suicidal cultists, of course) and they fit the theme of the scenario very well.

Overall
I loved this module: A very well-executed theme, a nice story, interesting combats with creatures I had never seen before, and cool hazards. There was loads of fun at the table, up to RNG insta-killing the BBEG with a crit fail before the party could act (a mild wtf? moment there ^^).

Perspective: Ran this high tier for 6 players (20CP).

Mechanics
I thought the investigation part was well-written: It included a good amount and variation of skill challenges (not all of which need to be succeeded at). The players caught on rather quickly on what was going on, but they had to make sure that they were correct. The chase was fun, again with a good variation of skills: It felt like running through the Magnimar version of Lonely Planet, which was pretty cool.

Combats
The combats were surprisingly resilient and fun: The enemies packed quite a punch, and the positioning game felt different than many combat encounters I've experienced so far. Slight caveat: When I looked at the low-tier version of the first combat I though "ouch", though players should be able to have a solution for that at this tier.

Lore
Apart from what you get to see of Magnimar, the lore doesn't stand out (and it doesn't need to), yet there are a few nods towards old PF1 scenarios, which I liked. It does help to show a picture of Magnimar to put the scale on which the city is built into perspective: New players just don't know about it, and experienced players can use the reminder.

Played this one the other day; We fell just in the high tier.

The mystery was okay (seen better, seen worse), though the callback to #2-13 is obvious and there was no real surprise. Yet I like that the investigation is at the heart of the unstable Great Power that is Taldor. It did a good job showing the powder keg that is Oppara, and I wonder if we're going to see more of that in later seasons (writing as we are nearing the halfway point of season 5). I've always been a fan of Gloriana Morilla and her storyline ever since she became head of the Taldor faction, so I certainly hope so.

I did like the skill encounters: They felt different, they were varied in required skills, and made it possible for nearly everybody to participate at the same time.

What I slightly dislike is the low number of combat encounters: I'm all for the possibility of skipping a combat (it gives other people the ability to shine, and it's cool to prevent or defuse a situation), but in this case that leaves only a single combat encounter, which feels a bit disappointing.

What I really dislike is unfortunately a gripe with the general Season 3 metaplot, so I guess that's on campaign management (not on the writer): Two-parters are generally geared towards a single mystery that needs to be solved over 2 adventures. It's meant to be solved in part 2, even though in most cases you are pushed towards solving it from the start before hearing "we'll contact you again soon" seemingly halfway through the mystery, which the taste of a meh-quality cliffhanger. Having played all of the season 3 multi-parters, only one part 1 felt actually satisfying, and it's not this one.

One of the better designed skill heavy scenarios I've seen published in a long time, with enough opportunity to roleplay. An important sidenote is that players should really be made aware of which minigame they are playing, otherwise the DC's will end up a lot higher than expected (as was mentioned in a previous review).
The combats are interesting enough, though somewhat on the easy side, especially with the possibility to bypass some.
I do recommend playing a talky character for this one, as it is very rewarding.
Story wise, this one is fun, and a good callback to the PF1 storyline.

Perspective: Ran this low tier (15CP).

The lore is cool, even if some of the flavor gets ruined a bit with the Remaster's reimagination of magical schools. The encounters are interesting, and meaningful since they all manage to convey a story. The skull has been amazing in every scenario so far, and the scenario is not afraid to show its power without overshadowing the players. The skull's background and personality lends itself to casual ridiculous ostentatious displays of magic, and I love it.

Skill wise, this one is fun: The skills are reasonably varied (within the range that you can expect) and DC's are right.

My only gripe is with the boss encounter: Once more the BBEG stats are disappointing, suggesting they lack any will to live (though that may be an issue limited to the low tier, as its stats are somewhat more reasonable in the high tier). If all the other encounters have more survivability than the boss fight, then what's the point of a boss fight? This seems to be a constant for the lower level "part 2" scenario's of Season 4: Smug bosses without any real capabilities, which makes you wonder how they even managed to get this far with their plans.

Perspective: Ran this in the high tier.

I do enjoy the lore that is presented in the Qadira story arc since season 3. It's well presented and evocative. I also like how the NPC's are presented, and their artwork is cool!

I did have some complaints about the skill challenges though:
1) The DC's are higher than they should be for this tier. That's not necessarily an issue if only 1 PC needs to succeed, but there are instances where this is not the case
2) Asking to constantly make the exact same skill check between the two same skills and a Lore that no-one is going to have is disappointing. I expect that within a single mini-game, but not as the core part of a scenario
3) Not all the information was where I elected to find it, which meant I had to go back and forth to find a line that I knew was somewhere

The combats are rough: The BBEG's abilities are punishing, so the GM should really follow the tactics as written to make it work as intended

I really enjoyed the flavor of this scenario: It's nice to see the students growing up, but that school really must be built on some ancient chaos themed burial ground or something.

Positive sides:
The flavor of the scenario is great
The encounters are very well themed and challenging
Lots of skill checks

Negative bits:
I like scenario's where you're in a hurry, but this was a bit much, especially with regards to how hard things hit. This is not an easy scenario
This one runs long, oddly despite a clearly hinted at time crunch: When writing or prepping, please consider that some hazards can easily take as long as regular combat encounters. Because of that, this felt like too many combat encounters

From a GM perspective this one was mostly clear and easy to prep. The handouts are useful, most of the information is there, it's just that after running it, some of the main mechanics of the scenario feel a bit off:
1- The mechanics of a hazard are somewhat unclear
2- There are a lot of skill challenges (which I do like!), and they generally all tie in well with the scenario. Yet the final (really broad) skill challenge seemed awesome, but felt a little disappointing when I ran it.

Finally, for a time-sensitive scenario, this one runs strangely long. A lot is happening, but it's mainly due to the combats. They are evocative and reasonably challenging, but

. Loved the high tier BBEG encounter: Those monsters are cool!

All in all I did absolutely enjoy running this one. Highly recommend, especially the high tier.

This one was fun to play. I enjoyed the references and the natural chaos generated by the NPC's: A GM that hams them up really boosts the whole experience of the scenario.
The combats were somewhat on the easy side, but they brought some nice and unexpected twists. The spicy part was well thought of.
Lore wise, not much is happening here, as this is clearly a setup for the higher (level-)ups.

I'm not entirely sure what the point of the scenario was: There's something with introducing new major NPC's for the season, which is ok; Introducing Blood of Elements and the changes therein, as well as planar politics that we know nothing about, sure. But do the encounters have to be so meaningless? I get that the intro scenarios get easier combats, esecially in the low tier, but the phrase "No will to live" really applies here. Also whats the point of that map? You can do everything without the tile(s) where the final combat takes place.

I'm not sure how much of a spoiler this is anymore, but lore wise it still doesn't sit well with me that

I get that there is a metaplotline going on with it and the whole elemental shabang, but still... It feels like diluting something awesome into something completely ordinary.

Perspective: I ran this today for a 4-player high tier party (20 CP).

From the way everything is setup, to the way the PDF is written, everything about the scenario brings back early-ish PF1 scenario memories, in a good way. But when prepping, a GM should be careful that the editing to delimit encounter sequences is somewhat unclear. This is likely the reason for some of the negative reviews below. A GM should be very careful when

The story felt old school PF1, though a little bit more information about the NPC the party is trying to convince, would have been nice: My players were asking for more information, and I just couldn't give any. I was also missing some background information about the BBEG, because this felt like a bit of a random guy having a beef with the Society for some unknown reason. I don't mean a whole story arc like we got for GMT or Thurl in PF1, but at least something to be able to improvise some roleplaying.

On the mechanics side, I like how simple everything was to run. It's almost fresh to see regular mechanics instead of the complexer mini-games we often get in so many of the scenario's.

I enjoyed the first and last combat very much: It's nice that you actually get supplies to deal with the specific type of enemy, and that it's absolutely worth it to use them. If the party fails to ask how to use them, remind them about the existence of Recall Knowledge. As to the BBEG fight specifically, I loved

The second encounter encounter on the other hand was brutal and had my players fearing for their lives. These monsters seem Apex-level creatures for their tier, which makes the encounter quite overpowering. There is also some unclarity about how different rules interact with one another, which resulted in a few GM calls. I'm not entirely sure how people get to 6 combat encounters as mentioned in an earlier review though.

All in all I enjoyed running this one very much!