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I ran this for a group of 4 casual players as part of the adventure path.

DISCLOSURE: We skipped the entirety of part 1 for reasons I laid out in my review of the previous chapter. In hindsight, I would have cut the last part of the previous book and instead run part 1 of this one as written, because it looks like a lot more fun than the fairly straight-forward dungeon crawl in book 4.

Still, there was plenty left to enjoy of this book. Part 2 is a fun set piece where the party gets to walk into a location, taking in the scenery, and then fight their way back out.

Part 3 is another dungeon crawl, but a brief and entertaining one with some intriguingly horrifying locations.

Because of the way the PCs are thrown into the situation, the scenario does not really allow the party to take a long rest all the way through part 2 and 3. My players were weary enough of the situation to be economical with their resources. But a group of more forceful players may need to be reminded about the fact that they are a long way from getting help and behind enemy lines and should be careful not to blow through their powers too quickly.

All in all, this is a solid entry in the AP. There were no encounters that felt like filler in part 2 and 3 and the atmosphere was tight. From the looks of it, the sandboxy part 1 would have added to the fun. Given the fantastic first book and some of the truly out-there encounters and locations in the previous books, nothing in here stands out enough to warrant a five star rating, however.

But any group going through the AP is not going to be disappointed by this.

Oh yeah, speaking of the AP: There is a big revelation for the PCs at the end of this. I have to say it's not pulled off to the greatest effect and it also leaves a lot of blanks for the GM to fill in. In fact, only one PC's revelation really matters for the rest of the AP and the rest are just dangling plot hooks for the GM to expand on as they see fit. As a lazy GM who buys adventures to have the work done for him, I was very disappointed by this. As a player, I think I would have been irked to just be a sidekick to the one PC that actually matters for the story. Fortunately, none of my players felt like that and were fine with (or even curious about) the barebones explanation I whipped up for their characters.

Some people may feel like this should shave a star of the adventure's rating but given that we still had a great time and my players are all eager to start book 6, I don't think it impacts the party's enjoyment of the AP as much after all.

I ran this for a group of four (rather casual) players as part of the adventure path. I did not make any changes to the adventure as written except for the notes in the spoiler tag below.

We enjoyed most of the adventure both behind and in front of the screen. The locations are interesting, the NPCs are fun, and the story is engaging. Especially following the first three adventures, where the party was literally confined to some sort of prison-like structure in each part, the openness of this one was a very welcome change of pace.

GMs should be aware, though, that many bits and pieces are only very roughly outlined. You will have to put in a lot more effort than with the previous adventures to really make this shine. A sound knowledge of the Pact Worlds setting is also very helpful.

The presentation of some of the events and set-pieces reminded me of the Starfinder Society style of dense, "Here are the skill checks you may try" descriptions. To the point that one single page in the adventure took us about 3-4 sessions to play through. This may sound like you are really getting your money's worth in terms of content, which you do, but on the flipside your GM really has to put in the work to bring it all to live or it will easily turn into "Here are the skill checks you can try, everybody give me 12 checks each and we'll see how you do".

Given the amount of content that was squeezed into the few pages of this book, one thing is particular curious to me, however. I will put it in spoiler tags because it gives away a major part of this and the next adventure's structure.

So all in all, while Upwell, Roselight, and many of the encounters in the first two parts were quite enjoyable, the lack of details for the investigation part and the redundancy of the final act were quite a letdown. In summary, I would give this adventure three stars as written.

If you are willing to make some changes to the adventure path's structure (see spoiler above) and have the time, energy, and creativity to fill in the blanks on the investigation and social encounters, you can easily beef this up to a 4 or even 5 star adventure for your players.

Usually I don't post reviews before I have actually run an adventure, but I have to make an exception here because the only other review is giving a minimum rating based on a misunderstanding.

The hazard in question (I assume) is a flow of lava that is described as dealing 20d6 damage on immersion. It's basically another way of saying "you can't just walk through here". At this point the party should have a vehicle that allows them to cross using the piloting skill with no risk for their personal HP (only to the vehicle's) if they fail. The adventure also mentions a (very cool and atmospheric) alternative means of transportation should the PCs lose or not bring their own vehicle.

I will come back to this once I've ran the adventure and will update the score according to my experience. But I greatly dislike single-issue reviews that are quite common on this site and distort the perceived ratings of a module.

Edit: After having run the adventure I can only confirm what I said above: The entire adventure runs very smoothly and we had a blast. The travel part may be a bit railroad-y but my players didn't mind. I think if you avoid showing them the map and instead make them feel like the time and location of the encounters depends more in their choices, they might not even notice at all.

Normally, I would rate this 4 stars due to one rather poorly motivated encounter that feels a lot like filler and a bit of an underwhelming final act. But since there is only one other review that so grossly underrated this adventure, I'll keep it at full score. Fun time!

After the fantastic first part of the adventure path, the second book's lack of originality surprised me.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of great ideas and fun critters in here. The atmosphere is on point. But the structure of the adventure is straight-forward, room-by-room encounters, almost exclusively unavoidable combat.

Once again: It's a fun, well-written crawl. If this were a standalone module, I would probably rate it 4 stars. But if you get a party together for an X-Files-style, conspiracy-heavy mystery adventure path and then you serve them 10 sessions worth of combat after combat, it just doesn't hold up well in that context.

Fortunately, it is not that long and the encounters were still interesting enough to carry us through. But after the incredible time we had with the first part, it just felt like a letdown.

I *loved* this book. I ran this for four (fairly casual) players on roll20 and you can read my summaries and notes on the experience on the messageboards right here. Spoilers galore, of course!

I really don't have anything negative to say about this. Given that there is only one other review so far, I feel compelled to address the negatives James pointed out:

I actually did not notice any poor editing, let alone any truly confusing mistakes. Maybe I am not reading thoroughly enough or my exocortex is properly autocorrecting, but there was nothing that bothered me at all. The only minor mistake I noticed is that a location is called out as being on the port side (the cargo hold for Event 4), but the map depicts the starboard side. Not that big of deal in my mind, though.

There was indeed not a lot of content in terms of crunch and encounters, but the module delivers in terms of atmosphere and plot. It took us about 15 hours to get through, but you could easily double that if you and your players like roleplaying out NPC interactions. There is everything you could possibly need and then some to bring each of the NPCs on board to life. So for the right groups, you would probably get way more playtime out of this than with your average dungeon crawl book.

One minor warning, though, to those who consider getting this book to just dip their toe or toe-like appendage into the AP with this book and then take it or leave it from there: It is very difficult to drop the AP after the finale of this one for numerous reasons. But I am almost certain you won't want to, anyway.

So go grab your ticket for the Chimera, it will be a trip to remember.

Ran this for a party of five level 1 characters and everybody had a great time, even though they fell short of meeting the faction goal.

We had to skip the optional encounter for time, unfortunately.

Ran this once for a level 1 party.

Great fun was had all around. I guess the players need to be okay with some railroading (see spoiler tag), but all in all it is just plain fun with some quite diverse locations for nice replayability.

Played through this with a rather unexperienced, unoptimized group and everyone had a good time.

There is plenty of roleplaying opportunity for those who enjoy that and plenty of opportunity to Kung Fu Fight! for those who want to cut to the chase.

All in all an enjoyable quest in an exotic setting.

I ran this twice for two different groups, both at low tier. It was the first 2E experience for everyone involved (not counting the playtest). Each time I used different items from the various tables (see spoilers below) and each time great fun was had by all. The encounters felt very heroic and especially compared to first edition's very swingy level 1 play, everything felt much more "stable" and the players felt like they were up against dangerous foes, but could pull through if they played their cards right (which they did). We loved it!

I had a longer review typed out but the website ate it...

The gist of it was that this is a great adventure with a fantastic opening scene where high-level PCs really get to show off their abilities. The main dungeon is a fun crawl and the way the history of the place is revealed was very-well received by my group. Through that neat trick, the final villain, which would otherwise be a little lifeless (pun intended), became much more interesting to the players.

However, there is only a section in the adventure that is a series of literally teleporting into a room with a monster, killing it, and teleporting to the next. While I get the flavor idea behind this series of rooms, in play, they are a bit of a drag. Make sure to adjust this to your players' preferences.

All in all, we enjoyed the Shattered Star immensely and felt like this epic conclusion was well worth the long journey.

I ran this last night for a group of two 5th level PCs and 2 4th level pre-gens in a non-organized play game.

The setting is fun and original and I'm sure many people will be stoked to get to meet some drow and their home world.

The first part, the negotiation, was tough but fun and I especially liked the variety of skills that could be used.

The second part, the research, was also fun and again a nice surprise, that even the Hacking Team could use skills other than Computers to contribute.

I especially appreciate, how streamlined the first two parts were and how the 24 h time limit helped to give some meaningful choices to the players: should we push onward to get more info or should we not waste any more time?

The third part was fantastic. The infiltration was fun and very well balanced (for our party) and the ghost operative had a chance to shine. This section felt like a stealth tactical game and we loved it!

The last bit in the warehouse was a little underwhelming. Basically you find three waves of half-orcs and more of the same drow you already fought upstairs. The final boss is also just a standard operative with no "special something" beyond higher damage output to make that final boss really feel like a finale.

In summary, we enjoyed this scenario and I think it can go a lot of very different ways depending on the party composition, which I think is a good thing. Play it for yourself and find out!

I ran this for a group of 4 players with level 4 PCs in a (non-Organized Play) home game.

The scenario does a good job of invoking themes and tropes from classic Old West movies: a desolate, one-horse mining town, a traveling snakeoil salesman, a saloon fight, the slick business man from the city and so on. If you play this up a little bit (by for example using the excellent western-style audio ambience from tabletopaudio.com), your players will have a great, Firefly-style kind of time.

Unfortunately, the scenario lacks in other ways. There are no complicated subsystems to learn and there is no twisty-turny plotline to keep track of but there are a lot of blank spaces that you as the GM will have to fill in on the spot if you don't spot them before hand (which I did not). Some examples:

All of these are not terribly hard to answer, but it would have been nice if those answers had been provided in the scenario, especially since there would have been plenty of page space.

But don't let all of these criticisms deter you from running this, the Old West flavor is just too good. However, there is nothing else to really make it stand out so it ends up being average. Would run it again!

I ran this for a group of four PCs with standard rules all-around.

For me, this was the weakest offering so far in the otherwise excellent Shattered Star adventure path. And I am not saying this because it is the fifth dungeon crawl in a row (because, come on, you want to complain that the dedicated dungeon AP has too many dungeons?!) but because it is the least cohesive one so far. Pretty much everything, from the reason the Guiltspur was built in the first place to the denizens of the different levels feels a bit jumbled.

That is not to say that a lot of encounters by themselves are not loads of fun. Some examples:

The problem with all of these examples is that you could cut them out of this adventure and drop them into any other with little to no work. While this is great for people who buy AP books to mine them for material they can use in their own campaign, I was disappointed of the randomness, especially when compared to the other excellent books of this AP.

Lastly, the final fight was a bit underwhelming. When you tell a level 15 party what kind of creature they are up against, they will arm and prepare themselves accordingly. So the inevitable happened: the party stomped the final villain in 3 rounds with hardly any major injuries. That was not as much of a problem for us because my players enjoyed the sense of accomplishment that their preparations paid off but it might irk other groups who are looking for more of a challenge in a boss fight.

In summary, I enjoyed running this book but it never really reached the greatness of any of the previous four books.

I GMed this for 3 players with 1st level characters and the pregen Altronus.

My players enjoyed some parts of it

even though they did not like the disconnected character of each of the faction head's quests. Their verdict was 3.5 stars.

I am rounding it down to 3 because there are a few things I did not like behind the screen: some descriptions just were very lacking in detail and had to be beefed up by the GM to keep things interesting.

All in all, a solid, if not spectacular scenario.

I ran this adventure for my party of 4 and did not make any major changes to the adventure as written.

We had a great time playing through it and enjoyed pretty much every encounter. I strongly recommend to bring in Jasper from the web enhancement of Curse of the Lady's Light (book 2 of Shattered Star) for added role-playing gold.

The dungeons in this book are mechanically solid and very atmospheric with some cool and creative ideas.

What stuck out as particularly good was that the PCs learn early on who their enemy is and what is up to, something a lot of adventures seem to forget and just surprise you with the BBEG at the very end. Here, the PCs learn gradually more of their enemy that might even change their attitude towards him entirely.

The final encounter of this book is epic in every sense of the word. The stakes are extremely high, the enemies powerful, and the final few moments have the drama of a cut-scene while still giving the players agency. Brilliantly done!

I strongly recommend this adventure to anyone who enjoys dungeon crawls. It is also ridiculously easy to use this adventure in your own campaign since the Shard can easily be removed or replaced by your own McGuffin.

I ran a group of 4 experienced, but non-optimizing players through this adventure and did all encounters as written.

After we finished this adventure, I asked my players to give me some feedback on the adventure itself and they all agreed that it was extremely hard, especially in the beginning. And I have to agree: Creatures with 4 attacks at level 1? Hardness 10 creatures vs. a level 2 party? Skill check DCs of up to 30 at level 3?

Sure, there are ways to make the tasks easier and I actually applaud this method: set the DC very high but be generous with circumstance bonuses (up to +10 from a single source) that can reduce it to almost trivial levels. It forces players to think in in-game terms and draws them away from their character sheet and pure mechanics. But not every group is going to like this.

The creature with hardness, however, is a very serious threat and almost impossible to overcome for low-level PCs. Make sure you work with your players and give some friendly tactical advice when they appear to get stuck.

Even though I tried to help them as best as I could without too much handholding, we had a TPK at level 1 and several near-TPKs in the rest of the adventure. If your group is not into that sort of threat level, make sure to tone down the encounters somewhat.

I even have to go as far and subtract a star for the difficulty level because one of my players got so frustrated after his character died that he returned with the strongest character build he could find online. That should not happen! It may be on me as the GM to let it get that far, but the adventure as written should not be so frustrating that you feel you have to choose the powerful over the flavorful options to survive.

Story-wise, it is a very fun exploration of a technological ruin/dungeon. The tech level slowly increases over the course of the adventure, making this a great introduction to Science Fantasy. The descriptions of the rooms are also written from a tech-ignorant perspective. In the beginning, this was a lot of fun as players and characters alike were trying to figure out what exactly the things in front of them did. But by the end of the adventure, when several people have picked up the Technologist feat, some ranks in Knowledge (engineering) and maybe even speak Androffan, the point-of-view of a technological ignoramus becomes a bit annoying because at that point everyone knows that it is a computer screen and it becomes tiring to have descriptions of "glowing glass panels with strange writing"). I know, I can of course paraphrase the boxed text, but I felt like the adventure could have handled this a bit more gracefully on its own.

All in all, we still had a great time with this one but there were a few frustrating moments due to the high difficulty levels. If you have a group of experienced players who have a certain level of system mastery, go ahead and add a star. For us, it was a 4 star experience.

I ran this for a group of 6 in high tier with the 4 player adjustment.

We had a fun time but the scenario, as did its prequel, lacked anything memorable that would make it stand out. It also did not feel particularly tied into the Plane of Fire or the City of Brass. The intrigue that the PCs get involved in could just as well take place anywhere else on Golarion (or, in fact, the multiverse).

The final fight was a little unsatisfying: the Tactics of the BBEG did not make good use of his strongest abilities, favoring melee (!) over spells. The 4 player adjustment also removed his minion, which made the encounter feel even more trivial.

Also, the final piece of information that the PCs spent two scenarios chasing after in the end feels tacked on and is in no way connected to what goes in the scenarios.

In summary, this two part series is really nothing to write home about, but it also is not a total train wreck. So if it is offered and you have no other options, go ahead. If there are other tables, you might want to put a pin in this.

Ran this for a group of 4 in high tier.

We enjoyed the scenario and had a fun time but it just lacked anything that would have made it memorable. There are some nice flavory details in the beginning to remind you that you are on the Plane of Fire, but all in all I dare say that the whole scenario could be easily transplanted anywhere on the Material Plane by simply changing the creature type of the main patron and her main rival. For such an exotic locale, I found that somewhat disappointing.

The encounters were fun and I appreciated the options to resolve them peacefully.

Note: If you plan to bring a paladin or other Lawful character to this, be prepared to be a little flexible.

The whole scenario took just about 4 hours to complete.

I played this last night with a group of 5 PCs in low tier.

We all had a great time! The group was fairly mixed between combat-optimized and good Knowledge and Diplomacy proficiency. There are many different ways that this scenario can go and apparently we made all the important checks and managed to bypass all combats except the last one, which is hard in low tier, but sound ridiculously hard to impossible in high tier.

In summary, I recommend this to players who like to roleplay and have characters with a decent amount of ranks in Knowledge skills and Diplomacy, but make sure that you end up in low tier. It will save your PC's life!

I ran this chapter as written for a group of 4 PCs as part of my ongoing Shattered Star campaign.

At last, Kaer Maga! The Asylum Stone! The City of Strangers!

And strange things you shall encounter, indeed... This adventure is a ride from one weird and strange set-piece to another.

If you want something that sticks more to a single theme or moves more gently from one site to another, look elsewhere.

If you are interested in a sample platter of what Kaer Maga has to offer, this is exactly your thing!

We fell into the second category and greatly enjoyed playing through this chapter.

The only downside is that the main villain is not introduced early enough in the adventure to make him and his lair feel truly legendary. It may work as written for some groups, as long as the GM stresses his importance in Varisian folklore, but for other groups you might want to seed rumors and superstition regarding him from day 1 of your campaign.

Like I said, this adventure is definitely not for everybody so think about your and your players' taste before picking this up.

We definitely had a blast, even though it was missing that little something extra that would have made it a 5 star experience.

I ran this for a group of 5 players.

The reviewers of the 4 and 5 star reviews of this module apparently never tried to run it. As much as I would love to love this module, it just does not come together at the table:

The three linked dungeons are filled with fairly random creatures. If you let those creatures sit in their rooms and wait for the PCs (as is implied by default in the adventure), it becomes a kick-in-the-door, kill the monster adventure. And don't get me wrong, that is totally fine if that's what you are looking for, but I prefer more realistic behavior of the inhabitants of a dungeon.

Also, the linked nature of the dungeon makes it very difficult to be properly prepared because the players have a lot of options where to explore next. Some groups and GMs will love that aspect, I find it more helpful to have a little bit of rails to guide my preparation, especially with CR 8-13 critters.

Another problem is that if you let dungeon's inhabitants behave realistically (i.e., fall back and regroup in other rooms), the entire dungeon becomes an impregnable fortress and the PCs hardly stand a chance at all.

Speaking of not a chance: the retrieval of the final McGuffin is also extremely difficult, which feels forced and just is not a lot of fun after just coming out of a climactic battle.

I really liked this book when I read through it the first time, the setting is nice and the atmosphere very on-theme, but when I started to actually chart out the sessions and when we played it, it just was not as much fun as it seemed at first.

I just hope that the second half of the Adventure Path is going to be more fun.

I played this with a group of 4 in high tier and enjoyed it a lot.

Our GM did a great job to make the setting stand out and (even though he mockingly pointed out a bunch of Star Wars parallels) I thought it was very flavorful, exotic and creative. Yes, the names are a bit weird sometimes, but if you encounter someone with a particularly strange name, how about asking them about it? You might be surprised.

In terms of mechanics, it was very challenging: we played with the 4 player adjustment, which apparently nerfed the encounters very little. The final encounter was epic and we were cutting it very close. My character actually died when too much of a good idea literally blew up in his face but the team still managed to save the day by the skin of their teeth.

In summary: a decent module with some fun flavor bits and very challenging encounters. Think about where you are going and prepare accordingly!

I ran this for four players in low tier.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable adventure that was easy to prepare and easy to run. There is a tiny subsystem to keep track of how the PCs succeed at staying undercover in an Aspis Consortium controlled city.

There are a few ways in which the players can feel like they really made the scenario "their own" with one encounter area that offers plenty of ways for the PCs to accomplish their goal and a final encounter whose timing and place depends largely on the players' actions.

I did not find any glaring plot holes or clunky mechanics (I don't consider it too much to ask that at least one person in the party owns a wayfinder...) and recommend the adventure to anyone interested in a rather open scenario that is not unnecessarily complex.

In case anyone is interested how it turned out for my group:

I ran a group of 4 players through this module as part of the Shattered Star adventure path using roll20 and the excellent maps from bigrin42. It was an awesome experience!

Trying to keep in tune with the generally old-school feel of Shattered Star, our group is essentially the classic four, but each member has a unique twist:

Daario Vanderale, happy-go-lucky male human rogue, an outcast of the aristocratic Magnimarian family, currently residing in the body of Sorshen.

Carmelizzia, female human fighter (cad) / shadowdancer, a Varisian dancer skilled in using her bladed scarf.

Iozif, male human bard / cleric of Shelyn, Carmelizzia's husband and bodyguard, brilliant fiddle player.

Jasmin, female human transmuter, adaptation of the insane cleric of Groetus Jasper from the web enhancement.

The group had a great time with this module, which does an excellent job of bringing its backstory to life. Almost the entire adventure takes place in a single dungeon but never gets boring. The place itself drips ancient history and all the creatures that can be encountered have a motivation to be where they are and can interact with other rooms without giving the GM a headache trying to keep everything together.

The difficulty is fair and challenging, and the final encounter can range from deadly to cakewalk depending on how well the players try to use the history of the place to their advantage. Very rewarding!

I fully recommend this adventure to everyone interested in a brilliant dungeon crawl, even outside of the Shattered Star adventure path. The entire adventure can be fit into any other campaign with only a few seconds of work.

I ran this for a group of 6 players in low tier.

My experience was overall very enjoyable and I absolutely recommend this adventure to anyone who wants to play or run something that supports and encourages roleplay and character interaction.

Even the success conditions can only really be met if players put themselves into their characters' shoes and think about what they do and say.

There is an easy and rewarding subsystem that encourages roleplay mechanically. If you have very mechanics-focused players, you might even want to tell them about the system to encourage them to get into character.

On the other hand, the combat felt a little lacking. It was generally too easy and especially the final battle was underwhelming. I very much appreciated the various ways to avoid combat in most encounters, though.