Talon Stormwarden's page

I had nearly the same combat play out for that encounter, except a caster was able to roll a 19 to dispel the dominate on about the 3rd round, and we limped into a win after that. It was brutal. The fighter needed a 20 on his save to escape the dominate.

Every other run of that scenario I've heard of was a cakewalk because the PCs swarmed the caster first. Initiative has a HUGE impact on that encounter.

I do note that if you make every challenge a Group challenge, then suddenly the whole thing is 11 points, which is about right.

Edit: Also, it tells you to use the Preparation activities from GM Core, it doesn't even list skills needed. If it was going to give different results for the checks it should say so.

Ah, yeah, I missed that bit. It’s such a mess. Your solution isn’t bad either, I like it. Though with no individual obstacles you’ll lose any inherent scaling for number of players. I have another week before I’m slated to run it, so I have some time to ponder still.

Oh, I see. You’re pulling that from GM Core. That’s just an example provided there. It’s not necessarily the same as the one in this scenario. That said, this scenario doesn’t list ANY of the effects of succeeding or failing at the given preparations, so that’s a major failing of the writing/editing. As I suggested above, the simplest thing to do is to award an Edge Point for a successful preparation and leave it at that.

I'm noticing that there is an individual challenge Winding Sewers, that everyone needs to succeed at, that is Lore checks or one of two Hard skill checks. That's going to be basically impossible unless either everyone is Trained or someone is an Expert in one of those two skills. If there are no Experts (for follow the leader) then some or most will be making untrained skill checks, and are likely to crash out the entire infiltration before it even really gets going.

Also, you can only do one Preparation activity. An option is Gossip, which grants a bonus only to further Preparation activities, of which there are none.
So, does this require the party to overcome all obstacles? Or does the GM look at their approach and pick obstacles for them until they reach 10 IP?
Thoughts?

I’m not seeing where the Gossip preparation is stated to help with other preparations. Did I miss it somewhere?

I think the easiest way to set up this infiltration and come the closest to what seems to be intended and also stick to the Infiltration guidelines is to define a “map” of the obstacles such that each path to the end comprises approximately 10 IPs. This keeps us at (or near anyway) the stated 10 IPs and also takes advantage of the feature of the infiltration system which allows for different PCs to take different paths to complete an objective. Given that the entire set of obstacles is 23 IPs (for 4 players), means that we’re going to have to be ok with going over 10, especially for parties of 5 (27 IPs) or 6 (31 IPs). With only 6 total obstacles, there can’t be too much variation in the paths.

Looking at the obstacles, two of them jump out at me for different reasons. The Library Puzzle Door is notable because the party should be able to try it no matter which path they choose, and I think it should, for narrative reasons, be at or near the end of the sequence of obstacles. The Arnisant Alarm stands out as well, because as an individual obstacle with 2 IPs, it will account for 8 to 12 IPs by itself (for 4 to 6 players respectively). However, a PC can completely bypass that one by playing 3-04. That puts a wrinkle into things that I’m not at all sure how to analyze.

If I’m putting the Arnisant Alarm on a separate path, I should probably put the 2 other 1 IP Individual obstacles on the other path. That accounts for 4 of the 6 obstacles, leaving 2 group obstacles of 2 IPs each. So I split them between the two paths and I’m done.

The two paths are then:
1) Roaming Patrol 2 IP (group)—>Arnisant Alarm 2 IP (individual)—>Library Puzzle Door 3 IP (group)
2) Winding Sewers 1 IP (individual)—>Pit Trap 2 IP (group)—>Imp 1 IP (individual)—>Library Puzzle Door 3 IP (group)

Anyway, those are my thoughts for now. I’ll ruminate about them.

Well, they did this infiltration MUCH better than the last one. But it’s still sorely lacking detail and coherence.

Preparations would normally provide one or more edge points, which could be spent to succeed on a failure or critical failure on an a roll to overcome an obstacle or complication (GM Core 198-199). Simplest thing is probably to give the party one EP for succeeding on a preparation, but only allow it to be spent on something that makes sense given the specific preparation.

As for completing the infiltration, the scenario says it takes 10 IP. But the subsystem, as written in GM Core, doesn’t call for a certain number of IPs, but rather a number of objectives. These two things are convertible one to the other, but more on that in a moment.

Later on pg 5 under Objective, the scenario says “The PCs' objective is to enter Greensteples without being noticed and make it to the second floor (area B). To fulfill this, they'll need to overcome the following obstacles.” This is more consistent with how GM Core defines success in an Infiltration, with a certain set of obstacles. However, the listed obstacles come to a total of 23 IPs (7 IPs worth of group obstacles + 4 IPs worth of individual obstacles x 4 PCs). Obtaining 23 IPs without accruing 15 APs should be very very difficult, given that the recommended APs (in GM Core) is 150% of the needed IPs (I.e. ~34-35 APs).

As for how I plan to actually run this abomination of an encounter…I’ll have to think on it a bit.

Gosh wouldn't it be nice if the publisher would make clarifications to such simple, yet impactful, things. Too bad they're magically constrained from doing such by the awful and powerful curse they've fallen under. That must be why...right?

Why is this obvious Vigilant Seal faction goal being ascribed to Envoy's Alliance? Makes 0 sense. "...those in the Envoy’s Alliance want to make
sure any threats have been dealt with before our scholars enter"

But of course that doesn't prohibit PCs from taking keepsakes that have no monetary value or mechanical effects from an adventure. For instance I recently played with an exemplar who was leveling up at the end of the session and they would be getting an additional ikon with that level. They kept a red sash off one of the NPCs and described that sash as being their new ikon after leveling up, purely for flavor. This is fine.

To be more specific, PCs do not get to keep any of the treasure found in the scenario. The ONLY monetary or physical reward PCs receive is the treasure bundles awarded at the end of the adventure plus anything explicitly stated on the chronicle (for instance Intro 1: Second Confirmation has a boon that awards a Wayfinder). The commonly held "in game" explanation for this is that all the treasure is given to the society and then the agents are paid an amount of gold indicated by the treasure bundles.

I am looking for the 'Tech' trait that is associated with certain undead so as to render the undead repellent ineffective. Am I missing something as none have this trait listed....?

It was apparently missed. But later in the research section, the threshold for 12 RP says "Notes later in the journal reveal that the introduction of electrical implants to zombies seems to allow them to ignore the effects of the poultice."

Any of the Mindless undead with implanted tech would be immune, so anything with Sparking or Cybernetics in the name.

I just noticed that the Aged Zombies (which are a variant of Withered) are immune to Mental without being Mindless. Withered are neither Mindless nor immune to Mental. Odd choice, not sure why they changed it, and why they changed one without the other.

We talked about this at our game Saturday. There's certainly an argument for and against Heropoints. HP are a base assumption for every PFS2 game, and while the normal "Don't forget to hand out hero points" part is missing, it also doesn't say not to hand them out as normal.

Question about Stat Blocks:

** spoiler omitted **

Responding on the GM thread where we can talk about this and other things without using spoilers. :)

Responding to a post on the product thread

Question about Stat Blocks:

stat block:
Tier 9-10 encounter C has gargantuan tarantulas, and Tier 11-12 also has gargantuan. Should Tier 9-10 be Huge (or Large), instead of Gargantuan?

Yeah, that's weird. Giant Tarantulas are normally large. For what it's worth, the Foundry implementation has them as large. End of the day though I don't think it makes much difference. There's plenty of room to move around and the size doesn't change much at all about the fight.

It's not as big a deal as 4 huge statues in a 30'x30' room for encounter D1.

Our local group also had lots of trouble with the final encounter, playing at level range 11-12.

Important note that the encounter math looks very wrong at level range 11-12, too. I think the statues should say (0) instead of (2), because as-written the final encounter is 200xp when a Severe encounter is normally 120xp (and even an Extreme encounter is 160xp).

(Removing the two statues brings things down to 120xp, suggesting this was an error that GMs can, under the current OPF guidelines, correct on their own in order to make this encounter Severe and not Extreme++)

To-note, the encounter math looks correct at level range 9-10 for the final encounter, for what it's worth.

Oh yeah, that definitely needs to be mentioned! It's come up on the discord I frequent but I forgot to mention here. Seems pretty clear that the SHADOWPACT STONE BULWARKS (2) statblock was directly copy pasted from encounter D1 and the (2) was not removed.

My players played really well, using mythic points to boost their initiative scores and immediately caging the boss in a wall of stone which bought them a whole turn. Despite this the last fight can turn into an absolute slog.

I was already writing the AcP check for a res after we realized our fighter needed a 20 to get rid of the dominate. You really had us on the ropes for a bit there. :)

When I played our GM didn't use Slither. Honestly, with a DC 38, Slither by itself is a possible TPK, before getting into Dominate (our fighter had to roll a 20 to save, thankfully a caster got off a lucky dispel magic against it), Chain Lightning, Sure Strike/Disintegrate, and all the rest.

I would allow prebuffing before entering area E at least. Hopefully the party has picked up on the hints that she's a VERY powerful caster by this time.

Editing to add that the replacement of Hero Points by Mythic Points is a 2 edged sword. Yes Mythic Points can do very powerful things, but not being able to prevent dying is a big loss, and as Andrew also mentions not being able to reroll flat checks. Only being able to reroll skill checks and saving throws is pretty limiting.

Also, the Godspeed mythic ability isn't very good. Being limited to Stride, Step or Leap is pretty weak at high level. And at this level, many PCs are flying (either permanently or buffed for a fight) and Godspeed is utterly useless to any flying PC.

Any day now! :)

Wow that’s a lot, I’m surprised. I haven’t run it online yet.

Have you submitted a report to Metamorphic? I did hear that they were given very little time to get this one out the door.

While I agree with your conclusion, there is at least an effect for doing well on the research encounter. The Help from Allies action has the following: Requirements The PCs gained enough research points to reach the second threshold of the representative's skill challenge.

There are Treasure Bundles dependent on the research also.

There is no other information available for this unfortunately. However, as the outcome of this chase is COMPLETELY irrelevant to the rest of the scenario, I’d say start them wherever you like.

Also, be aware that the starting NPCs for encounter A2 in the scenario body do not match what’s in the appendix. The body lists 3 Ulfen Bodyguards at low tier and 2 Ulfen Captains at high tier, while the appendix leaves the number off, implying just 1 of each. The numbers in the body work out to a severe encounter, which matches the stated encounter difficulty. The fact that the PCs will almost certainly have some assistance from other NPCs in that encounter is meant to balance it out I think.

It occurred to me a couple days ago why this infiltration has been bothering me so much. In addition to having either omitted instructions to only run a subset of obstacles rather than all OR wildly misunderstanding the relationship between Awareness Points and Infiltration Points (and an appropriate balance point between the two), the designer seems to fundamentally misunderstand the concept of individual and group obstacles in the infiltration subsystem. Every single obstacle should have been listed as an individual obstacle rather than group obstacle, as they are things that each PC has to overcome (though they might need/receive help, I discuss this later). There are no obstacles like a door needing unlocked or a trap needing disarmed, which are examples of group obstacles.

Group obstacles are things that only have to be overcome once by anyone in the group. The obstacles in this scenario are all things requiring EACH PC to do things (swim across a rushing river, climb up or down things, sneak from here to there). In the framework of the Infiltration subsystem, these are individual obstacles. The infiltration system does make allowances for team members helping each other with the Smooth the Path opportunity (pg 198 GMC):

Smooth The Path
Opportunity
Requirements The PC has successfully completed an individual objective and some other PCs have not.
Having completed your objective, you help an ally who is still trying to reach that goal. Describe how you are helping. This gives the ally the benefits of Following the Expert (Player Core 438). In unusual cases, the GM might allow you to attempt a relevant skill check to overcome the obstacle on behalf of the other PC instead.

You might say, “why can’t successes at a group obstacle represent the efforts of the entire group to get everyone in the group through the obstacle, after all that’s how chase obstacles work”, and you wouldn’t be wrong. I have two responses to that, firstly hold that thought for a paragraph or two, and secondly anytime you reference a preexisting game mechanic, but then utilize it in ways not consistent with that mechanic, you encourage misunderstanding of the mechanic and cause confusion down the road. I can’t imagine Paizo wants to encourage that sort of thing.

The infiltration subsystem really is an extremely versatile system. The possible addition of PC preparations, edge points, varied types of complications and awareness thresholds, not to mention the option to choose from different paths to accomplish the same goal, can make for a robust and interesting set piece. However, it is understandable that the designer of a PFS scenario might not want to make full use of all the options offered by the infiltration system. It is understandable that they might want to make the skill challenges more cooperative without having to add the complexity of the Smooth the Path opportunity or other means of a PC assisting other PCs. PFS scenarios need to be succinct due to the nature of many store and convention venues and teamwork should be encouraged. A simpler skill subsystem that measures the group’s progress rather than individual already exists…the chase subsystem.

I suspect the designer looked at the names of these two subsystems and decided infiltration seemed like a better fit for the theme of the “quiet” path, and so used it without fully understanding how it works. However, the framework of the chase subsystem comes much closer to what the designer seems to have been trying to accomplish. And just because the NAME of the subsystem implies haste and bluster doesn’t mean it can’t be flavored as a quiet and deliberate process.

I’m not saying that the designer was wrong to use infiltration, it certainly could have worked with some tweaks. But, as presented, the skill challenge poses problems. The overall difficulty of the challenge is way too high (26 IP to succeed while failing at 10 AP), which is what started this discussion in the first place, and the mislabeling of group/individual obstacles will only foster more confusion down the road for GMs, especially inexperienced ones.

I see the same thing you’re seeing. I don’t see a reason for D2 (quick, assessed at Moderate) to be easier than D4 (quiet, assessed as Severe). I definitely can see having D4 (high alert) be harder than both the other variations, but they didn’t make any adjustment there. Seems like a missed opportunity. D3 high alert is substantially harder to complete without losing TBs, maybe they thought that was punishment enough.

I think they had some good ideas for this one, but the execution didn’t quite come out right.

So, I just ran this scenario and there was a disagreement about the tile game that Teritha invites the players to join. I thought that if a PC wins the final round, they get 7GP (in low tier) IN ADDITION to treasure bundles. One of the players said that it does not work that way in any scenario. I'm not sure of what to do.

Bit late to answer, but the player was correct. Treasure bundles represent all of the monetary reward in a scenario. It's an abstracted method. On page 51 you can see that the PCs earn a treasure bundle for each of the party festivities they succeed at, up to a max of 2. Those treasure bundles represent the gold they're winning in the games.

To be more specific, what allows access to Hungerseed, Spirit Warrior, and other Uncommon options in the book is the specific text in the book for each option, i.e. "Characters of Tian origin have access to the hungerseed versatile heritage" and "Access Tian Xia origin"(under the Spirit Warrior dedication feat).

If there were an uncommon heritage in the book which DIDN'T have this specific text or something similar, it wouldn't be available despite the FAQ saying that "Characters from Tian Xia have access to MANY uncommon options in this book, including heritages."(emphasis mine).

I’ll agree that was an odd way to give an example. However, it doesn’t limit attempts if the party chooses to address each challenge one at a time, with the whole party rolling, aiding, or abstaining on each.

My experience so far is only for a table of 5 at high tier. They accumulated very close to 20 and possibly more, I don’t recall exactly how many since it didn’t matter at that point. They critically succeeded on quite a few challenges.

I had the guard who escorted them suggest that they try to overachieve in each room as there could be extra goodies to be had for more successes, and that merely succeeding in a room might not be good enough to win the gauntlet if their opponents succeeded but did it better than them. Indeed their secondary objective depends on doing more than the bare minimum in each room.

Avram, I’m not sure what you intend when you say they can keep attempting. Master E is entirely correct. Yes, if they best two challenges in a room (obtaining enough points to exit) they can still attempt the other three, but as you can only attempt each challenge once, a party of 6 must succeed on all 5 challenges and critically so on 4 of the 5.

I think that’s going to be a GM call. I would allow it.

Biggest issue I’m seeing with this scenario is the missing survival DC on page 14.

And FYI, you can tell when a replay session has been reported but the replay point has not been marked by looking at the "Notes" field of the reported session. It will say "Player has already played scenario at session # XX of event # YYYY Event Name on Date". The character will get no reputation in the Paizo system until the replay point is marked.

I'm considering scheduling 2 Series 2 quests in one of our store slots, and if I'm going to do that, I definitely don't want to schedule 2 long ones together. I'd like to get community opinions on ranking of adventure length so that I at least have a chance to get 2 done in a slot.

I've played or run all of these, some only once, but from what I recall this might be a rough order of longest to shortest. I'd love to get other inputs.

#20 The Dacilane Academy's Show Must Go On
#15 In the Footsteps of Horror
#16 The Winter Queen's Dollhouse
#18 Student Exchange
#17 Escorting a Mirage
#19 The Elsewhere Feast
#14 The Swordlord's Challenge

It's in the book itself. The Character Options tells you everything is Standard availability (unless otherwise noted on that page, and those options aren't noted), the book tells you it's Uncommon, but tells you what you need to access it.

You can only get 4 evidence points from captured legionnaires in the ambush at the research facility, per page 8 under Development. You can get 1 more from the letters they carry.

Reviving Nanaeil (and thereby getting his testimony) nets you another 3 (for a cumulative total of 8). The chart on page 17 tops out at 9-10, implying a maximum of 10EP. Further consider that the 9-10 EP entry references Captain Nanaeil’s revival and testimony. All of this, to me at least, is very strong evidence that the final encounter may have been intended to provide a maximum of 2 EP for captured legionnaires, which is the base number without scaling. I haven’t had to decide if I’m running it that way yet, as all three of my parties have revived Nanaeil, making it a moot point.

If you do limit the final encounter to 2 EP and the party fails to revive the captain, they would have to make a single DC 22 diplomacy check to convince Captain Rufah, making it a moot point again if they succeed on that check. Anyway, those are my early morning musings on the subject. Take what you will from them.

I ran this locally yesterday. I had it be dark but adding fatigued seemed overly punishing.

Travel Phase 1 has 4 obstacles and 2 hazards, of which we choose 2 and 1, respectively.
Travel Phase 2 has 4 obstacles and 2 complications, and we're supposed to run all of them (though you might not run all or any of the complications depending on results of the obstacles).

I ran them as written (2 for phase 1, all 4 for phase 2), except I didn't give the players the choice of order for phase 2, but had them determine order randomly. There really isn't enough information in the name/description to make a meaningful choice, and I'd rather the players not get bogged down in overanalyzing something they don't really have enough info to analyze effectively anyway.

The DCs for the 'extra' task in 2 of the obstacles and for the complications are very high in phase 2, so it's likely they will gain a lot more AP there than in phase 1. I took that as an indication that the longer the day wears on the more likely that information gets back to the Restoration Regiment.

For the 3 groups I've run so far, they accumulated between 4 and 9 AP. No one has gotten the best result and no one got the worst result. Seemed to work out pretty well to me.

All 3 groups got enough EP to avoid making a check to convince Captain Rufah.

IMO, GMs should be using death and dying rules if the PCs want to not kill them.

Ran this twice this past weekend. One group of 6 left TWO PCs behind to stabilize/guard the downed NPC. I was a bit worried for the rest of the group who chose to take on Norvix without the other two, but they handled it fine, thanks in part to some bad roles on my part. But low level casters just don't pack much punch.

I did notice that the trap for Ulthun's office location makes the combat occur at the same time as the trap is encountered, as the trap is located at the top of the stairs and Norvix is in the landing right there. My reduced party handled all of it with aplomb. The encounter is too easy, IMO.

The Crowd hazard was bad at one table because I randomly rolled 2 of my 4 players to be in the initial crowd area (I misremembered the scenario text that stated that at least 1 of the PCs should be in the initial area), one of the squishies came up. The crowd rolled higher initiative so that PC took both the initial reaction damage and the routine damage, and I think they crit failed on of the saves. Even though that PC went down, they calmed the crowd easily once their turns came up.

I ran this twice at CinCityCon this weekend. I ran it with Reactive Strikes the first time and then with Retributuve Strikes the second. Unsurprisingly Reactive Strikes made the combat more deadly, while Retributive Strikes made the fight last longer. I’m not sure there was a clear overall difficulty difference.

Given that Retributive Strike now needs an aura size to be fully defined, it would be nice to have a clarification.

Talon Stormwarden wrote:

I’m similarly unsure what would be an obvious error to fix vs a change that increases difficulty, which is prohibited.

There is a creature in a scenario with +132 to it's attack. (Pretty clearly it was changed from +13 to +12 or vice versa and someone forgot to hit delete / backspace. I guess it is lucky it wasn't on the damage line...)

While I’ll agree that’s a very obvious error, that really doesn’t address the question.

I’m similarly unsure what would be an obvious error to fix vs a change that increases difficulty, which is prohibited. A recent scenario in season 5 had a printed weak version of a creature. Base creature, also printed in the scenario, had 60 hp, while the weak one was printed with 15. It seemed clear to me that the weak template hit point value (45 according to the weak template chart) was subtracted from the base hit point value rather than replacing it. But that’s a big difficulty increase. Allowed to change?

In the same scenario there were 4 hazards. 2 of the hazards had stealth DCs in the low to mid 20s, while the other 2 had stealth BONUSES in the low to mid 20s. Seems clear to me there was an error on the last 2, but is that an “obvious typo or error”?

These are just two of the many, many errors in recent scenarios. While I think that the loosening of GM guidelines is indeed a good thing, correcting errors in scenarios as well would go a long way to improving quality of life for your GMs and providing a more even play experience across the program.

The current half-measure of publishing changes to the Foundry modules in an out of the way location is simply not satisfactory, if you ask me. Add to that the Metamorphic team (who produce the Foundry modules) are likely only to catch errors that directly impact the creation of the module. They are unlikely to catch errors or inconsistencies buried in a block of text that they simply cut and paste into the module.

Yes, you can definitely do that. Rogue got an upgrade in the class chassis by getting martial weapon proficiency and better fortitude saves. The only thing you might lose is pathfinder school benefits, if you had any (alternate lore, bonus feat at 5th level or extra downtime from being Field Commissioned before).

Feats, Spells, Items, etc from older sources are still valid. Only if they have been reprinted with the same name are you required to use the version from the remaster. So Minor Magic still exists as a feat, even though it wasn't reprinted. The guidance about class chassis only applies to class chassis. Even if you don't rebuild, you can still take feats from remastered sources, as those new feats are just as legal as the old ones for you.

Similarly, Produce Flame still exists, even though the new Ignition is a "replacement" for it. As they have different names they both still exist and are equally valid.

That said, some classes have been changed enough that new feats may not work with old classes (like Oracle or Champion) so you can definitely get into some weirdness there.

I suppose, since the players aren't likely to know what the hazards will do until they trigger one, only a few will be activated, only what's needed to get at the phantom. So there will be some AoE damage being tossed around but not enough (hopefully) to overwhelm them. The rest of the party will probably want to stop the hazards and/or heal up while those who CAN damage the phantom deal with it. Still, not much point to scaling as written.

What I might do is alternate any extra hazards due to scaling between where the party is likely to run into them (i.e. between where the phantom is and the party's likely path) and further out where the party aren't likely to activate them at all. If someone runs in heedlessly they might trigger 2-3 or more hazards and really make for a difficult fight. If they move in more slowly and tactically they may be able to disable each hazard one at a time and so not get overwhelmed.

Reading over the mentioned encounter, a few things occur to me. You COULD say that the hazards start activated, as there are many people in the area fleeing, etc. That way the other PCs have something to do. But at the higher CPs that would turn into a LOT of aoe damage. There can be up to 5 extra hazards, and all of them will very likely be within 90' of the phantom. So on the one hand we have CP scaling that does nothing (as The.Vortex explains) or on the other hand slays parties outright after just a couple of rounds. Neither seems intended.

As currently WRITTEN, the 'one free rebuild' 'granted' under the Remaster requires that the character be played prior to last November. Therefore, as I read it, any character of a class in Player Core 2 that was first played after November 15 and before August 12 does not get a free rebuild. Am I missing something? Is that the way the Remaster 'rules' are intended?

That is correct unfortunately. Alex reiterates this here.

We made it very clear when we first posted the Remaster Guidelines that characters would not be granted a second rebuild. Players who elected to build characters using classes slated for a remaster should have been aware that they would not be granted a rebuild.

Level 1 characters may still freely rebuild as usual. Higher-level characters will require a purchased rebuild.

For my online games, I've begun requiring that players import their character to my Foundry table at least 24 hours before game time. People who take the effort to sign on to the table and import/build their character there are much more likely to be serious about playing.

If it passes 24 hours I'll send a discord message to anyone who doesn't have a character on my table yet. If they don't reply I drop them and get a waitlisted player in immediately and message them, asking them to import their character. Tends to weed out the people who aren't serious about showing up.

I think Ranger only got 1 change to the chassis, which is the level 9 feature. It changes from enemies in NATURAL difficult terrain being offguard, to enemies in ANY difficult terrain being offguard.

That was enough for me to want to rebuild.

Thanks for the clarity on who is doing what parts here Redeux. I was one of the people saying “Foundry team” for lack of more precise language. I’m glad that’s all clearer now.

It's true that diseases are cleared for free after all scenarios, so the advice is definitely redundant for Putrid Plague and Zombie Rot.

As for Corrupting Spite, it's a curse, but has listed Stages, which I think means you could eventually remove it with enough successful saving throws, as Curses with stages follow the normal Affliction rules. So yeah, the whole statement is a bit redundant, but maybe good to clarify for the curse.

I’ve read the scenario now. As written, it seems to me that stabilizing the victim (via a 10 minute treat wounds) is a red herring (though seemingly unintended). As you mention they will still die at 15 minutes if Norvix isn’t stopped, and at 25 minutes if the ritual isn’t disrupted (via dispel magic or a 10 minute skill check).