The.Vortex's page

The Foundry VTT module was updated to include the adventure now. It completely drops the additional damage from that creature. Not sure if that is a mistake or intentional yet.

You have to remember that haunts don't get 3 actions by default. They get a number of actions that their routine tells them.

So Haunt number 2, has 2 actions, and each time it acts it targets 3 random creatures. One disable leaves it 1 action, and 2 disables destroys it.

Haunt number 3 has 3 actions. Each time it acts is targets 2 random creatures. Each disable reduces those actions by one etc.

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Lots of people miss this, including occasionally authors [...]

And I am pretty sure that is the case here, too. Even if the hazards don't state that, I am pretty certain that it is meant one attack per action, which leaves me with the issue I had from the beginning. Haunt 1 and 3 would be potentioally quite deadly with your literal interpretation of the rules.

I just realised something else: The Undead Hellknights do "plus 1d8 unholy" damage. I suppose that should be spirit and the attack has the unholy trait? Or should it be void?

I am prepping this scenario for the weekend and came across two things that feel a bit off:

- There is no explanation / guidance on when to use the easier or harder versions of the encounters. Starfinder has explained that somewhere (Baseline: 6x lower level, Easier: 4x lower level, harder: 6x higher level), but since Pathfinder has used a different format until now, I don't think I have seen similar guidance anywhere.

- Part A is not scaled at all. Groups with only 4 characters thus have one third less rolls than groups of 6. And it would even be easy: 4 players get 6 rounds, 5 players 5 rounds, 6 players 4 rounds.
Since that part is important for the secondary success conditions, I would suggest using more rounds for smaller groups to keep it fair!

PS: This adventure does NOT have enough content for a full scenario! Even for a shorter runtime, there just is not enough here!

The second hazard's routine in low tier reads:

(two actions) Spectral chains snake out to wrap around three different random creatures trapped in the haunt,

The third one reads:

(three actions) The chains rattle and sigh ominously around two different random creatures

And in both cases, successes on disabeling the hazard reduce the number of actions. That would make sense if the number of targets would be equal to the number of targets. Right now, there is no clear connection between the number of actions and the number of targets, so there also isn't a clear definition of what reducing the number of actions does.

What corner does a large soldier choose when they use a melee weapon to make an area attack?

When using feats like Whirling Swipe, large sized soldiers can choose any of the 9 corners along the edge of their space.

Either the number should be 8, or the "edge" part shouldn't be there. A large sized soldier has a total of 9 corners, yes. But one of them is in the center of the creature, not on the edge. The edge only has 8 "corners".

I just DMed this and found a couple of odd things. All concern the three hazards in the second part of the adventure:

1. How is this supposed to be handled? Is the switchover from one hazard to the next a new encounter, i.e. everyone rolls a new initiative? Or will the new hazard be inserted into initiative in the current encounter?

2. The second and third hazard are inconsistent when it comes to number of actions. At least in the Foundry Module, the second one is listed with two actions, but the routine says three, while the third one is the other way round. Which numbers are correct?

Anthem is a focus spell as long as you sustain it; it's mostly better than Get Em! Get Em! does more damage, especially for the envoy. If you don't sustain Anthem, you're likely to run out of focus points during the fight.

Courageous Anthem is better than Anthem since there's no need to sustain it, and it's a cantrip.

You are correct, but only in a vacuum. In reality, the Rhythm Mystic can extend the duration of the effect by simply using Transfer Vitality - something they would probably do anyways.

but even the Bard gets to use Charisma for Bardic Lore.

This has been mentioned twice now in this thread. Where do you get that from? Bardic Lore, unlike Esoteric Lore, is just another Lore skill and should use intelligence, shouldn't it?

I ran the scenario yesterday and didn't allow the abilities of trolls and ogres to be used on the others, either. The fight was already pretty long and hard (due to some lucky rolls by one of the ogres, who rolled 3 or 4 nat 20s while hitting the back line with his deadly hook).

For the secondary goal I went with the more sane option, too. The group of 12 reached 15 or so points, so they weren't even that far off from the harder reading. But it just felt too punishing to require that amount of successes, especially compared to other scenarios.

As for the length: Yes, we skipped the optional one, too and it took us more than 5.5 hours to finish the game. Definitely a long one!

Another note: The final two encounters don't really make sense on that map. Zaluraak should easily be able to see what is happening in the chamber. And the players would see the dragon the whole time, too. It feels like there should be some kind of corridor or other seperation between the two areas.

I am just preparing to run the adventure tomorrow. There are two things that seem a bit off / odd to me:

- The enemies in Encounter A is a bit weird: No matter the subtier, it is always a mix of trolls and ogres, many of those with abilities that are species-specific. For example the Ogre Boss has a buff for all other Ogres. But at low tier, he is paired with three trolls and no ogre (depending on CP). Or the Troll Warleader in High Tier has an area attack that hits anything that isn't a troll.
Are we supposed to treat their allies as the correct type of creature? Or do they just not use those abilities in this fight?

- The secondary success condition states that you need to "score at least half of the possible points in the Victory Point challenge". Are the possible points based on "everyone rolls a success every time" or are really the points for "everyone crits every time" needed? The first would be SIGNIFICANTLY easier to achieve and somewhere between the thresholds that are used earlier in the adventure (which are basicalls "up to one third" and "more than 2/3" of "everbody rolls a success every time". If the target number is based on the CRITICAL SUCCESSES, it would be more than what was needed during the adventure itself

The review system has lost many features. Could we please get back the following?

- Ability to edit/update a review: mistakes happen.
- linking reviews to your account so readers can find other reviews written by the same person
- Ability to format your reviews, currently, even if you are reposting a properly formatted review (bold text, spoiler tags, paragraphs), it turns into a huge, very hard-to-read block of text. This makes it next to impossible to write nuanced reviews that anyone would actually bother reading.
- limit the ability to post a review to people who are logged into a store account

Seconded! The new review system is just terrible if you want to write anything but a very short statement

Honestly, leaving reviews to buying customers feels fine to me. We already got very few reviews per AP volume but we always get the one from the dude who just leaves one star without a comment, because he's on his third (or higher) account doing this, because he hates 2E on the principle that it isn't 1E.

The issue is: That way only the GM can leave a review, not the players. And in case of Org Play with the Foundry VTT premium modules, not even the GM can, if he doesn't also buy the PDFs.

Reviews I'm meeting with the platform vendor in the next few days and will discuss opening up reviews to everyone, at least for some period of time.

We'll also discuss importing existing reviews. I agree that they are quite valuable to both new and existing players.

Much appreciated. Without those changes, all my reviews of the last two seasons would be lost without me being able to even copy and paste them to the new store, since I only own the Foundry Modules and not the actual PDFs.

I saw some comments that people were struggling with the Pickled Ear hazard and was trying to think of anything that might help. It may be worth reminding PCs struggling with the hazard that the goal is for Roxie to be ok. I'm not saying that's intended behavior or anything, only that the building is less important than their or Roxie's lives if they can get everyone out. Also the description of the hellfire's "personality" is that it likes toying with its victims, so doing less optimal things like cutting off retreat when the PCs are advancing or putting fires around a PC to scare them is in flavor. It's at least my understanding that when the tavern partially collapses after five rounds it ends the encounter, so the PCs can't be stuck doing it indefinitely.

Yes, it will end eventually. But if you have 6 characters trying for 5 rounds (well, more like four rounds, since they have to get close to the hazard in the first round), it is still up to 24 rolls against the same couple of skills. That can take a long time and become quite tedious quickly.

Also I saw someone using starburst for the fires at GenCon and adopted that and that really inspires people to put the flames out :)

I used purple flame images when DMing this online. It made the people want to put those out, too - it is just: The adventure provides exactly ONE way to do so: Magic with the light or water trait. Not many characters have access to that!

Another thing about this hazard: Why is nature not among the skills you can use to disrupt its magic? Those are still flames (as evidenced by the water trait to douse them), so primal magic should work fine.

Great! I'm happy to hear that I nailed the run time, and that your group enjoyed the swinging pirates! If you really like it, please leave a review!

I usually sleep at least once before writing a review, so my brain can work on the experience. So, since it is a new day now, I posted my review just now :)

In that case you dialed it in perfectly. We player for a total of 3 hours, 40 minutes - including a 10 minute break in the middle. So a total playtime of exactly 3.5 hours :)

We had a lot of fun and the pirates with their constant ropey shenannigans where a lot of fun, though pretty underwhelming since they hit only rarely (18 CP, 6 players - 1x level 1, 4x level 2, 1x level 3)

Getting enough of them to surrender was quite a challenge since they rarely survived a hit. Olad killed quite a few with his additional damage.

Overall, if I disregard all the editing stuff mentioned earlier in the thread, one of the best adventures of rhe recent past. Thanks for that :)

I will tell you that after my first adventure playtests, I had raised the number of goblins above the normal encounter budget because they died too quickly. If you have a strong combat group, you may wish to go with the higher number.

This might be one of the rare cases where I am actually allowed to make it harder since the adventure is unclear ;)

Oh, another point I noticed: The PDF lists the playtime as 2-3 hours - shouldn't it be 4-5 for a scenario currently? Will report on how long it actually ran later :)

My interpretation is that you take all the civilians with you until that part finishes. The adventure seems to assume that you only return to VC Brackett at the very end of the scenario, and after Event 2 there is a line that states that you can now leave the civilians behind, which to me says that you have to herd them until that point.
And yes, if everything goes to plan, every PC has to use the guide civilians exploration action at the end.

While thinking about building a melee soldier, I stumbled upon an interaction of two rules that I am not sure about how to handle:

The "boost 1dX" trait allows to spend an action to add damage dice to the next attack made with a weapon.
Using a melee soldier and Whirling Swipe, I can Area Attack with for example a Painglaive and get a Primary Attack melee strike with that weapon as well.
To which of those does the boost apply?

Possible lines of thought I had:

1: To the primary target attack - it is the first attack to resolve after the boost
2: To the area attack - it is the action with the attack trait that you "activated" after the boost
3: Both, since the free strike is part of the area attack action

I think it would be 1, which then leads to a rather interesting choice: Do I want to do more area damage by skipping my primary target free strike? Or do I want to make that strike for maximum damage against that single target?

I hope that you and your players enjoy the adventure nonetheless!

I am pretty sure we will. The adventure itself was a fun read for sure, and I am looking forward to running it tomorrow. Just the editing stuff dampens my enthusiasm a bit

I must be missing something.

What is the use of the Guide Civilians activity and the Civilians boost?

I don’t see any place where the PCs enter combat while guiding civilians to safety.

The Posandi Bros. (and Sister) would like a word with you and all the people trailing behind you!

And yet another thing:

The number of enemies for ALL encounters are unclear. The adventure itself lists a different number than the appendix. It also lists the level of the Athamaru Pirate as 2, while the appendix (correctly) says 3.
It is always one Goblin Pirate / Rigger that is added if you follow the numbers from the adventure itself. In every single case, it would bring the XP budget up from 80 to 100.
All encounters are listed as Moderate, so the budget of 80 sounds right? 100 is still not severe, so could be considered correct, too.

Take a look at Handout 2 (for players) where the type of consumable is spelled out exactly.

Ah, there it is. Thank you :)

Another thing I just noticed (due to Foundry VTT not having an actor for the Determined Captain Coziva):

While in Low Tier the only changes due to her being a variant are the attacks, in High Tier, the HP are off by A LOT. It seems like they forgot to change the HP from low to high tier. And since downing her ends the fight immediately, that is a pretty big issue!

EDIT: And two more things I found:

1. Minor error in the scaling of the final encounter in low tier: 16+ CP tells you to add two Pirate Goblin Recruits. There are no recruits mentioned anywhere else. Probably an old name for the creatures?

2. On page 6, the description of Nairaba and Kitsch's assistance just states "healing potion", but not which kind. I assume it will be the level-appropriate one, so minor for low tier and lesser for high tier

I am currently reading the adventure as my first stop to preparing it for the coming weekend. I found a couple of things that stood out as weird / problematic:

Event 1 (the Chase Scene):

- The bonus from "Help from Shipyard workers" is untyped in the sidebar. In Handout #1 it is a circumstance bonus, but only if you get it for ALL obstacles. I guess it is meant to be a circumstance bonus all the time? That would also unfortunately make the possible bonus for creative solutions pointless.
- The scaling for higher subtier is only mentioned in passing at the beginning of the chase. Easy to overlook, so take note, GMs :)
- While at the topic of scaling: There is no scaling for either challenge points or number of players. So a group of four level 1 characters have the same DCs and number of obstacle points needed as a party of 6 level 2 characters. That seems like an oversight!

Conclusion / Reporting:

- Isn't Reporting Condition D superflous? If B and C are checked, D is automatic. Maybe it makes it easier for the devs to track? And it is just one more click, so not really an issue, just something I noticed.

The.Vortex wrote:

My guess is that they removed the rarity tags at some point and just forgot this feat existed / relied upon those rarities.

The argument 'the game devs forgot how the rules work' is a hard argument to support. You would also need to show that it is causing a significant game balance problem.

I never said that the devs don't know how the rules worked. I said they forgot about an interaction. That is not the same thing at all!

In this case:

Aeon Rifle wrote:

A mainstay of the Azlanti Star Empire,

Which ancestry in Player Core is from Azlanti?

Humans!

Squiggit wrote:

I mean, part of the result of this is that there are a handful of weapons in SF Player Core that are almost unusable by anyone but Fighters, which may not even be an option to begin with... which kind of just feels like a lack of attention to detail.

Operatives start out at Trained in Advanced 'guns', which the Aeon Rifle would qualify as, and it scales to higher proficiencies at the same levels as their proficiency with Simple and Martial.

And Weapon Proficiency exists. It may not be as strong of an option as an Ancestral Weaponry feat, but that is the price it pays for being applicable to every weapon.

So 'almost unusable' seems like a bit of hyperbole.

No, it is not. The increased accuracy is one of the main features of the Operative. And unlike the fighter, they don't have a feat that allows them to use the weapon at full proficiency later on. That makes it quite a poor choice for Operatives as it stands.

Yes, it is technically usable. But the cost of doing so is so high that it is in the "almost unusable" area of options

The.Vortex wrote:

Indeed! In PF2e it oten being used as one of the very few ways to use advanced weapons at full proficiency, and it is quite a shame that SF2e kind of made that impossible by just not having any uncommon advanced options.

I'm not understanding why this is shameful.

It is shameful because some of the advanced weapons would be interesting options to play around with. Aeon Rifle immediately comes to my mind for that. But trying to use them right now is a nightmare, since the feat does NOT work with them, unlike in PF2e, where there are at least a handful uncommon advanced racial weapons that the feat can be used for.

My guess is that they removed the rarity tags at some point and just forgot this feat existed / relied upon those rarities.

Indeed! In PF2e it oten being used as one of the very few ways to use advanced weapons at full proficiency, and it is quite a shame that SF2e kind of made that impossible by just not having any uncommon advanced options.

The Human / Shirren Racial Feat Unconventional Weaponry gives access to uncommon weapons that are common for other ancestries or cultures - yet in current Starfinder no such weapons even exist!

The feat is basically a reprint from Pathfinder 2e, where a lot of racial weapons, as well as regional ones, are of uncommon rarity. Starfinder 2e has gotten rid of the uncommon rarity for those, yet the feat has not been changed. So as of right now, if you don't allow PF2e options (like organized play, which currently doesn't allow the use of those), is the feat utterly pointless? Is it just there for things to come out in the future or should it be changed to reflect the change in rarities for ancestry-specific weapons?

What we are getting:
- Narrow Level Range
- Shorter Adventures (aka even less room for interesting things to happen)
- stat blocks not included, so you have to juggle multiple books
- simplified rules for adjusting the difficulty to the party

What we are not getting:
- The ability to create characters at higher levels
- everything is repeatable
- no more Treasure Bundles, reputation and factions

Or, to say it in another way: We get all the bad / mixed stuff, without any of the good stuff from the SFS scenarios. I can't say that I am a fan of those changes at all.

That being said, I can see and understand, WHY those changes are being made. The past couple of seasons of PFS2e scenarios were FULL of adventures that had bad editing, stuff that just didn't work, etc. - so reducing the complexity by removing half the possible level range, not having CP adjustments and reducing the overall length (and with that amount of content) of adventures will MASSIVELY reduce the workload for the people creating / editing those adventures. Maybe that is the silver lining I should focus on: That this change MIGHT lead to better adventures with less errors than we had in the recent past? Or am I that just some copium speaking?

PS: I REALLY hope that we won't get too many level 1-2 scnearios! I have no interest in playing at those levels and have used GM / AP chronicles to start almost all of my characters at level 3+.

To quote "Pitch Meeting" on YT: So that the movie can happen!

Hesla's complete story and motivation are SO weird that I honestly can't give you any better advice. That NPC doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me :(

If you want a caster (but not aeon) weapon that is Martial SFS just introduced the Reality Ripper.

Modular (A and Razing or V and Deadly d10), Tech, Tracking (you have to buy it at a minimum level 2 with Tracking 1 installed), Unwieldy.

Only 40' and unwieldy, but if you're an arcane or pirmal caster who has found an elemental weakness this lets you potentially hit any of them twice on one turn by casting then striking and still having the changed weapon damage type next round.

Ah, nice. I didn't even realize it had the Caster Trait. That would indeed be a good weapon for a Hybrid Caster / Weapon User. As you said: The unwieldy doesn't matter much if you cast spells anyways. Pick a spell with a Save instead of an attack roll and then fire the weapon. Might be a good alternative to the Aeon Rifle.

Hello everyone,

Ever since the playtest, I was kind of fascinated by the idea of the Aeon Rifle. Aeon and Caster are traits that are really cool and can give a character a lot of damage flexibility. In the playtest, we assumed that it would be uncommon (rarities didn't exist in the playtest) and I made a Starlit Span Magus with Unconventional Weaponry to test crossplay. It worked great and the character was a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, with the full rules out now, the Aeon Rifle is NOT uncommon. So right now there doesn't see to be a way to get full proficiency with it? Well, there isn't a class that can fully utilize it right now, anyways, so maybe we will get an Atzlanti Archetype in the future that fixes the issue. But right now, has anyone got any cool or good options to make use of the weapon?

Right now, the best I could come up with, was going either Witchwarper (Analystics?) or Mystic (Rhythm), being human and taking the Weapon Proficiency Feat twice at first level (once from the ancestry feat, once from the heritage). It works, but feels like too much work / investment somehow. Maybe it is fitting that this option is (at level 1) limited to humans, seeing as how the Azlanti view other races.

I can kind of understand that you don't want the discount code to be valid for all the new Starfinder 2 stuff - but to limit it to things 6 months or older is not something I expected. I was planning on buying a big bunch of (digital) books and have even postponed some recent purchases in anticipation of this code. Guess I will wait longer for some of the books then.

I played this yesterday and prepared it to be run in a week this morning. Looking at the skill section and then the treasure bundle allocation, something definitely doesn't make sense here.

The tresure bundles state:

Aiding the Populace: 1 Treasure Bundle for each task completed, up to 6 Treasure Bundles.

But the Aiding the Populace tasks CANNOT all be completed. Two of them are open ended! And two tasks list treasures, one of which is just gold (which is useless for the rest of the adventure) but doesn't seem to be taken into account for the treasure bundles at all!

The closest I could get to the written TB allocation would be that you would have to reach the listed threasholds for things to happen in every single challenge. So you would need: (group size: n)

Task 1: n points
Task 2: n points (possibly without doing any lethal damage)
Task 3: n points
Task 4: 3 points (non-scaling - why?) (possibly with at least one person needing to be there every single round)
Task 5: floor(n/2) points, but only with certain skills, or a perception success in round 3 (WTF? Doing perception here in other rounds doesn't do ANYTHING?!)
Task 6: 3 points (non-scaling - why?)

For a total of floor(3.5*n/2)+6 points needed
A party of 4 would need 20 points, a party of 5 23 and a party of 6 27 points. From a total of 12, 15 or 18 turns. That means, you need between 1.5 and 1.67 points per turn, perfectly distributed and sometimes taking special considerations into account to reach the full rewards. Most of them against a standard DC for that level - which, at this level - starts to become pretty hard unless you have good attributes, proficiency and a skill item for a skill. While reaching that MIGHT be possible, it is EXTREMELY unlikely, bordering on impossible.

I would suggest to completely disregard the Treasure Bundles for this section and instead give out 2 per round the characters are helping - no matter how succesfull or not. Or maybe just give out the 6 regardless of what they do?

Another weird issue, though far less severe, are the success conditions. This is the first time I can think of, where reaching the secondary condition is kind of automatic, as is the faction mission, while the primary success condition can be failed despite completing the adventure.
I appreciate what the writers did here by swapping them around to emphasize that helping the populace was the primary goal, but unless you explicitly state that to the players in the conclusion / aftermath, it will have no effect whatsoever.

As much as I'd love to turn on the ability for people to write reviews for whatever products they'd like, the current system has been damaged by bots, international spammers, and those who hate particular product lines or editions. Paizo just doesn't have the resources to police a vast catalog constantly under assault by bad actors.

We know you're not the bad actors, but to start we need to leave the baseline as "only verified purchasers." In the future, feature gods willing, perhaps we can change that to unlock as you move up reward tiers. One more item for new feature requests...

-Jim

Maybe you are policing them quite well curently, but looking at the reviews of PFS scenarios for the last two seasons, I cannot see any indication of troll reviews there. So I don't see a valid reason to change the current system. And it is frankly baffling to me that you want to restrict the reviews of ADVENTURES to the people that bought them. That would mean that players cannot review and adventure they just played. That removes 80% or so of possible valid reviewers!

If you absolutely MUST restrict those reviews (again: currently I see no indication that such a restriction is even needed), how about allowing people who have the adventure reported as played or GMed at least? That would also prevent most, if not all, trolls from doing so, but still allow people who demonstrably have experienced the product to voice their opinions about it?

Please don't lock it away under some rewards tier, either. That, too, would remove a lot of players from the pool of possible reviewers!

The.Vortex wrote:

A question about the review rewards: I am an avid player and GM of the Society Scenarios, but have switched to using the Foundry VTT Premium Modules, which already include everything I need to GM. But that technically means that I do not own the scenarios themselves. So I WON'T get gold for leaving reviews? I would definitely NOT like that!

While you might not be able to review the scenario itself, you will be able to review the Foundry modules built from the scenarios. That will also grant the 5 gold.

If you purchased a bundle product (that contains the Foundry version and the PDF), you should be able to review both products. A product needs to show up in your purchase history to write a review for it.

-Jim

That does make it sound as if it will in the future be IMPOSSIBLE to write reviews for products you don't own? So far I thought I just wouldn't get gold for it. If it is as you say, I sincerely ask you to reconsider! That would prevent players from reviewing scenarios they have played, which would be a very bad idea. It should NOT be only the GMs that are able to write reviews.

Also, back to my main point: The Foundry Module is one for a complete season. It does NOT make sense to write reviews for the individual scenarios in the review section of a bundle of 20 or so scenarios!

A question about the review rewards: I am an avid player and GM of the Society Scenarios, but have switched to using the Foundry VTT Premium Modules, which already include everything I need to GM. But that technically means that I do not own the scenarios themselves. So I WON'T get gold for leaving reviews? I would definitely NOT like that!

I just GMed this at the high end of high tier for 6 players - the skill challenges were absolutely trivial. On the first one, they had 17 points after 3 of the four rounds, on the second one they had 13 points after ust two of the four possible investigations. The DCs are quite low, so with 24 rolls, it should be VERY likely that groups reach the highest possible thresholds.

Also, as I suspected earlier, there were quite a few questions about the content of the Symposium itself. It is a real shame that there is nothing in the adventure for more studious players / characters to sink their teeth in.

A friend of mine confirmed that the issues are present in the PDF version of the adventure as well and not only in the module.

(I only have the premium module, so some or all of the issues I found might only be different in the PDF)

I am currently prepping this to run it tomorrow and found a few things worth mentioning:

1. The first skill challenge (Presentation) doesn't account for number of players at all! So a group of 4 players has 16 actions, while one of 6 players will have 24 - but the number of successes needed is the same.
This might be less of an issue if the secondary success condition didn't consist ENTIRELY of this skill challenge.
This seems like an obvious mistake to me, so may it would be OK here to give smaller groups more rounds? 6 rounds for 4, 5 rounds for 5 and 4 rounds for 6 characters? That way, groups of all sizes have (almost) the same number of rolls to accumulate points (24/25/24).

2. The second skill challenge (Investigation) also doesn't account for the number of players when it comes to the number of successes needed. But since this one only affects initiative a tiny bit, it doesn't matter as much. Also, the thresholds are easier (8/13 instead of 10/15)
Another thing about this one: It is indicated that the players can start whereever they like. But then it lists the different challenges as rounds? This feels like a leftover of a previous version where this was a more formal type of challenge.

3. Najid's "Fennic Scream" ability has two failure effects in both subtiers. Which one is the correct one? Stunned 2 or Stunned for one round?

4. Content wise, I have two issues with this adventure:
a)It feels kind of bad that this is a scientific symposium, but there is almost NO INFO AT ALL about the subject that is being discussed at the symposium. There is a short sentence about what the Pathfinder Society is presenting, but nothing at all about the results of the other factions! We have had adventures recently that were almost pure lore dumps. This one is lacking lore. Badly.
b) The Pathfinder Society are NOT the last group on the list of presenters. There are three groups that are supposed to present their findings after the players. Since the proceedings are interrupted, it makes sense that they don't do that right away. But the conclusion makes it sound like they don't present their findings later, either.

Those two points in conjunction strongly suggest that the whole theme of the adventure is pure window dressing and not meant to really do anything and thus wasn't spared too much thought.

5. On a more general note: The adventure could have used another round of proof reading! It is riddled with errors and weird sentences.

(Why is there no thread for this already? It is out a month now, has 7 reviews, and quite a few problems - has nobody noticed? Or did nobody care? I am confused)

I played this last week and then prepared and GMed it on sunday. Both in High Tier. Here are a few points that remain unclear / feel weird:

- What is the point of having multiple keys of the same color? Are the keys supposed to be single use?
- And while we are at it: What is the point of even having keys of different colors (other than the teleportation circle later on)? From what I can see, it doesn't matter at all if you use the green or red portals. And even if you could use purple, it wouldn't make a difference, either

- How is the encounter against the aquatic enemies supposed to work? The Megalodon is too large to fit through any of the wells in the room. Both my GM and me just handwaved it, but technically, that enemy just doesn't work here

- What is up with some of the DCs in this adventure? If you fail some saves, you are pulled under water and the escape DC is 36! That is a VERY HARD DC for Level 9. But at least in that case you had to fail some saved to get there. Unlike the final encounter, which starts with a DC 35 save for everyone. That is INSANE! Most people at that level will have somewhere around +16-+18 for the save - minute chances of success, and high chances of critical failure. In both runs, we had people go down to that damage

- Are you supposed to be able to disable or even "reverse the polarity" of the focus before combat starts? If so, it would probably trivialize the final encounter. But it would also mean that the final encounter wouldn't actually really happen the way it is described, so it probably shouldn't be allowed.

- During the chase: One penalty (Exit's this way) sound like it auto-clears the obstacle if the group didn't pass on their own. The others don't. And since you have 10 rounds, it wouldn't make sense for all of them to clear that obstacle for you. But is it correct that that particular obstacle is automatically cleared with some minor damage?

- Missing scaling on subsystems - Research as well as chase seem to be lacking any scaling, either for player number or for CP. So a group of 4 will have a MUCH harder time here. That is what scaling should prevent, so the lack of it is kind of weird.

The.Vortex wrote:

(maybe) interesting observation after skimming over the replies:

Every single class with Int as key attribute has beeen mentioned. Some of them quite a lot. What is it about those intelligent characters that makes them disliked so much / weak?

I wonder how much is an overreaction to Cha being historically the most common "dump stat" (outside of a few classes/"builds" that required/focused on Cha) before PF2...

However, in PF2 it seems that Int is now the most common "dump stat" if not required by the class. It also seems that the Cha-focused classes got a bunch more and/or better goodies than the Int-focused ones.

Absolutely. Especially in PFS, where social skills come up quite regularly, while the Int-based skills are rarely as important. And even if they are: It is way more important to have one person with the skill maxed then, while situations where everyone needs to roll Diplomacy against a lower DC are more common.

My solution to make rituals easier, while using a only slightly modified system, would be to shift the effects of secondary casters by one degree:

Critical Success: IMPROVE the degree of success of the main roll by one
Success: Circumstance Bonus of +2 to the main roll
Failure: Nothing
Crit Failure: Circumstance Penalty of -4 for the main roll

That way, the secondary casters don't feel like they are most likely a burden on the already tough main check, but have a good chance of actually HELPING, sometimes even in a very significant way.

We just finished book 3 yesterday and I have to say that I hugely enjoy many aspects of this Adventure Path. But for the love of all the gods of Golarion: Who thought it was a good idea to use rituals as a roadblock multiple times in this AP?!

The very first of the roadblocks (earlier adventure, not getting into spoilers here) we needed 8 tries to finally finish the ritual. EVERYONE was complaining about that broken system at the end. But it worked out and just took us a lot of time. No real harm done, I guess?

The second time (end of chapter two of book three) we had to do a ritual again. We got flashbacks to the first ritual and where dreading a similar situation. First attempt failed, but this one at least had a fail forward mechanic. Yay!

But then came the end of the book. We had the almost perfect group for the ritual. Primary and Secondary casters where Masters in the relevant skill, everyone had the maxium attribute of +4 (Level 9), non-lore-skills had items with a +1 - the primary caster could have gotten a +2 item, which would have been the only thing we could do to improve our chances. But not by much.
We tried. And (critically) failed. Time and again. The GM handed out extra Hero Points to improve our chances. We tried to find spells or items that could help us, but there just isn't anything in the system that CAN help with a 5 day ritual. It all came down to rolling dice and hoping. But we failed and failed and failed. This wasn't fun for anyone.
In the end the GM had to pull the "deus ex machina" the adventure offers as a solution to the problem. Usually most of the players would have voted against using such a crutch, but in this case, the rules for rituals are just SO STUPID and the fact that this ritual is there as a roadblock felt so bad that we decided to take the only out the adventure gave us. Otherwise it would have soured our opinion of the whole AP more than it already has.

Who designed the ritual system and ever thought it would be a good idea? Why does this otherwise stellar AP use it as a hard roardblock multiple times?

As a maths nerd I did some calculations and found out that our chance of success or critical success as about 35% per try. So even with our almost perfect stats and the maximum of 4 tries before time runs out, there was about an 18% chance of failing every single one of those. That means that about 1 in 5 groups WILL fail this. And other than the deus ex machina solution, that means the AP stops there. Can that really intended?

(maybe) interesting observation after skimming over the replies:

Every single class with Int as key attribute has beeen mentioned. Some of them quite a lot. What is it about those intelligent characters that makes them disliked so much / weak?

@Maya Coleman: I haven't heard back from you in a while now. And at UKGE yesterday, I was asked to bump up this thread in the hopes of getting some more information.
Would it help if I sent you a link to the Github page where the current version of my script is located, so that you can have a look at it yourself? If so: should I post it here or send it to you via PN?

To someone who works in IT, it looks more like a bug than censorship to me.
The bigger issue to me are all the reviews that are being eaten by "you backtracked too far" and people then just writing a single line. Those reviews are gone forever, while the ones hidden by a bug might be restorable.

"While our beloved Venture-Gossip is missing" - whoever said she was beloved? As far as I can tell, she was present in two scenarios - in one it was our job to distract her long enough for someone else to do what she actually wanted, and in the other she gave us a rather rambling briefing. Not really a beloved character from my point of view.

Looking forward to kick Hesla's but, though :D

PS: there is a trailing /p> right before the last set of illustrations.

Hey, Vortex! To get you the right answer on this, we have some follow up questions! Are you looking to grab your own data or the data of other players as well?

Hey Maya,

I am only grabbing data for me right now. Another GM asked me to parse details for sessions in their event, to be able to count the number of unique players that played there. So that would technically be data of other players, I guess? That isn't the focus of the tool, though, and if that would not be welcome, I can limit the uses of the tool to my own / the user's own data