The.Vortex's page

I GMed this for a low tier (18 CP) group.
Runtime was 3:40, including a 10 minute break.

TL;DR: Enemies with some fun mechanics, a used boat salesman NPC and an overall interesting setting come together to form a fun scenario that is brought down a bit by bad editing / development

The Good:
- Pirate Gorillas! What more do you want me to say?
- The "BBEG" has a decent backstory that the characters are likely to learn about and get to sympathise with
- If you can, play this with a swashbuckler! Ropes are everywhere and the enemies have special abilities to make use of that. Why not join?
- Olad the Alright Shipwright (or, as I called him in german "Olad, der brauchbare Gebrauchtschiffhändler") is a cool NPC. Real sleazy used car, I mean, boat saleman vibes, but when push comes to shove, he rises up and becomes really helpful
- Kitsch and Nairaba also help in some of the fights, which makes them even less standard fights. A nice change of pace

The bad:
- Unfortunately, besides being fun due to all the non-standard stuff going on, the fights where pretty underwhelming. Hordes of CR -1 enemies just don't do all that much.
- The HP those -1 CR goblins had was so low that getting them below 50% to have a chance to convince them of surrendering was quite hard
- (This one is more a personal thing and won't be reflected in the rating): Pirates are BAD! They where murderers and some of the worst people imaginable. Can we please stop trying to make them fun? Even here the pirates attack the PCs with lethal force. Why exactly are we having mercy with them?

The ugly:
- This is one of the adventures that would have needed another pass through development and editing! For all the things found (so far), you can look in the GM discussion section of the forums (here)

Without the errors, etc. in the scenario, I would have been on the fence somewhere between 4 and 5 stars. One of the best scenarios in recent past for me, while not perfect.
Those errors downgrade this to a solid 4 star rating for me.

I DMed this for a low tier group and then played it with a high tier one
Runtime was a little over four hours in both cases

TL;DR: A decent intro scenario for the season, even though it kind of lacks a good explanation as to why all this is happening. The variable parts are fine, but one of the mandatory sections is just bad. Another one has enemies with cool abilities, though.

The Good:
- The Posandi Bros. (and Sister) are enemies with unique and interesting abilities. Living Shield is just something that I love to see - a true villain ability that is both flavourful and useful! And the sister basically being a "necromancer" but with imps is cool, too, though in both runs I had, she died before ever being able to utilize those tools
- The whole part with the civilians to rescue is done quite well - different types of challenges, some fun scenes, you get small bonuses from them being there, and it adds a lot of flavor.

The bad:
- The civilians can somewhat hamper the effectiveness of some classes. Rogues cannot use Avoid Notice while using the special exploration mode activity, and if you did a particular one of the variable items, a bard will kind of feel much of his regular usefullness stolen by the bonus given by the adventure. That might be fine at higher levels where they have more options for composition spells, but not for a 1-4 adventure

The ugly:
- One of the treasure bundles is linked to a specific variable part of the scenario. Does that mean that if by chance you don't have that part you are down one TB? Seems unfair!
- The whole encounter in the Pickled Ear is just TERRIBLE! The hazard can need up to SEVEN successes to disable (unless you use thievery, which requires the character to actively step into the flames, which can be kind of hard with the wrong number of CP), there are no rules on how to get Roxie out of there. The only way to extinguish flames seems to be to use spells with one of two traits - which not everybody will have access to. Also: Can the hazard spawn fire underneath a character? If so, the whole scene becomes a real deathtrap. If not, once everybody is in position, it becomes a slog to roll all those checks you need to finally disable it (or the time runs out). Also: For whatever reason, one of the magic skills (nature) is NOT among the ones you can use for disabeling. Why? Isn't even this fire somewhat elemental? I would have understood Occultism not being there, since it deals neither with divine, nor elemental things, but Nature missing? I don't get it!

Overall a decent enough intro, but the whole pickle of a situation prevents it from getting more than three stars from me.

(We just finished playing this scenario in high tier and I read though it afterwards to check a few things that weren't clear from a player perspective)

TL;DR: This adventure is a fitting end to one of the worst metaplots I can remember! Take note, though, that I said "fitting" and not "good". Because like all the other adventures in the Hesla-Storyline, it is TERRIBLE!

But let us have a bit of a closer look:

The good:
- There is a (slight) chance that enough groups have acted or rolled in a way that this is the last we see of Hesla Embersplitter. I doubt it, though.
- Nothing else. This one does not have a single redeeming thing to it!

The bad:
- The combats in this adventure are very uninteresting. Two fights total, one against a single opponent and potentially a hazard - with the singular opponent not having much in the way of truly interesting things to do. The other fight is against multiple lower leveld swarms. Both didn't pose any challenge, at least not to the group I played with.
- There is a chase in the middle of the adventure that doesn't do all that much, other than waste time. There is no real failure possible, and all you get for failing is some NPC showing up. Which, honestly, would have been more interesting than the successfull run my group did.
- For whatever reason, the author of the chase thought it would be a good idea to include some terrible puns in a scene where the whole city is being attacked. A good way to remove any kind of drama from the situation!
- One of the obstacles in the chase has the option to use attacks or spells against guards, with NO negative consequences for doing so. WTF?

The ugly:
- The whole story side of this adventure is just HORRIBLY bad!
- The plan is to temporarily resurrect a demon lord in the middle of a friggin' city to destroy an artifact?! Whose idea was that?! Couldn't it have been done somewhere else?!
- Also, the PCs have no idea that his actually WAS the plan. The adventure never tells them. So the see a demon lord, whose corpse has been found earlier in the season, coming out of nowhere, with no explanation given to them.
- Why in all the god's name does this adventure try HARD to redeem Hesla? Yes, she has had a bad childhood. But last we saw here, she tried to destroy a settlement to demonstrate her power. Really good Pathfinder / ally material here!
- Unless the players AND some NPS roll REALLY well, they don't even have the chance to deal the final blow of the adventure. That is taken out of their hands by an NPC.

I would have loved to give this adventure 0 stars, but unfortunately, that is not possible. At least this metaplot is done now. Maybe we will be getting something better next season?

Preface: I played this with 6 players in low tier and then prepped the adventure to run it as a GM this saturday, also in low tier (are there even characters without AP chronicles for high tier yet?)

TL;DR: While the continuous combat is an interesting change of pace, the frankly broken treasure bundle allocation for the skill section as well as just not much being there overall made for a lackluster scenario

The Good
- I really like that the approach to combat is different here. You have multiple (up to three) combats in VERY quick succession, followed by one more with a 10 minute break. That makes for an interesting experience and changes the usefulness of short term (1 minute) buffs as well as the value of Focus Points since there is barely a chance to get them back.

The Bad
- You have multiple (up to three) combats in VERY quick succession, followed by one more with a 10 minute break. That makes for an interesting experience and changes the usefulness of short term (1 minute) buffs as well as the value of Focus Points since there is barely a chance to get them back. (Yes, this is both good AND bad - depending on how you want to play and what you character is. E.g. Psychics will probably not like it, while pure Martials will be in their element)
- Some of the abilities of the BBEG don't work properly / are worded in a way that doesn't make sense. One of his strongest abilities would RAW damage / eventually kill all CP adjustments (they have only a 10% chance to make their save every turn and there is no rule allowing them to ignore the effect - though there probably should be one)
- This is one of the series of adventures centered around Hesla Emberspltter. Since I haven't liked her story (nor do I think it makes a whole lot of sense overall), this is a negative point for me. Your milage may vary.

The Ugly
- Once again we have maps that DO NOT WORK with the monsters presented! There are up to four huge and one gargantuan creature supposed to be placed in a 6x6 grid, with the only exit the building has being a 10 ft wide door (though the door might be a Foundry Module issue - the adventure states that the building is fully collapsed). Another encounter has up to three huge and one large creature, all supposed to be in a 3x6 rectangle. This one at least doesn't have a choke point in the form of a door.
- The treasure bundles. Who, boy. What wen't wrong here? The adventure flat out TELLS the GM that it is "very likely" (an understatement if there ever was one - look in the GM Thread in OrgPlay Forums if you want to have a look at the number of successes needed) that groups won't be able to finish all the tasks. Yet to get full TB rewards for this section you HAVE to succeed at all of them. And it isn't even completely clear what is ment by "completing a task" - two of the tasks CANNOT be completed. You can just continue to do them for Morale Points. Another one for the pile of adventures that don't really work as written :(

(I played this in High Tier with 6 characters, then GMed it for 4 High Tier characters)

TL;DR: Too long, some insane DCs, two subsystems with added complexities, only held together by a somewhat interesting setting / idea

The good:
- The setting / idea behind this is kind of neat. This is an emergency operation after something went wrong. Interesting change of pace
- There is also some foreshadowing for later scenarios in this or maybe even next season. Those are not as heavy handed as others have been, which I appreciated

The bad:
- This scenario has a lot of combats, some exploration, as well as two subsystems. One of them has been modified in a major way. While that modification seems to be interesting, it made it really painful to run. Taking into account that combats at this level range tend to take a bit longer anyways, this scenario will most likely NOT fit into a 4-5 hour slot. Both runs I had were somewhere around 5.5 hours - and that was with ample prepwork from the GMs as well as having FoundryVTT for a lot of automation.
- The adventure shows one of the flaws of mid- to high-tier Pathfinder 2: The DCs run away quite a bit. On lower levels, having something trained with a halfway decent attribute is enough to still roll on most things. In this level range, at least in this adventure: Not so much anymore! There were multiple things with DCs beyond 30, with one Escape DC being 36 in the worst case, as well as a MANDATORY UNPREVENTABLE save DC of 35 (high tier) (see ugly). But even some disable DCs were just too high unless you have characters optimized for it (Master proficiency, max attribute, +2 skill item and still only a 55% chance of success. Yay!)
- As has been the case quite a lot lately, there were multiple things that were either unclear or didn't make a whole lot of sense. I put those in the GM Discussion thread on the forums if you are interested.

The ugly:
- No scaling for either of the two subsystems other than subtier. A group of 4 level 9 characters (16 CP) will have the same DCs and required successes as a group of 6 level 10 characters (36 CP)
- The start of the final encounter can be insanely punishing. In both runs I had, at least one character was dropped from full health to dying 2 with the rolling of initiative. If this takes down the one character that was set up to deal with the MacGuffin, it can derail the combat quite quickly
- The rest of the encounter felt utterly lackluster. The enemies were pathetic and the MacGuffin did something completely different from the initial action. It made the whole fight feel off.

So, all that being said, I still think that the basic idea and the foreshadowing are enough to give this scenario 2 stars. It is FAR from perfect, but I have (regrettably) played and GMed worse.

I played this in low tier

TL;DR: This adventure is quite short and more or less just a lore dump for the Hesla Embersplitter part of the metaplot. If you are interested in that plot it might be interesting, though even then your character won't have all that much to do

The good:
- If you like the Hesla Embersplitter plot, you will find out much more about her story here

The bad:
- If you are not into the plot of Lady Hesla, this adventure will hold NOTHING of interest for you
- mechanical Content: 1 or 2 fights, a couple of hazards, two skill challenges, which consist of one roll each - So, not much at all!
- One of the fights can happen at a place on a map with EXTREMELY limited room. The other WILL happen in an area with VERY little room. Fortunately enough we could convice one player to NOT play his Minotaur here

The ugly:
- Whar has become of the Pathfinder Society?! We are (again!) breaking into houses of people. Not without reason, true. But it just feels wrong. Again.
- It has been a long time since I felt THIS railroaded by a scenario. The scene at the very end didn't allow for ANY deviation and didn't even use a subsystem, even though in this case it might have been much more appropriate then in many scenarios that actually do use it.

Since I never really liked the Hesla Embersplitter story - it always felt too heavy handed, too obvious from the very beginning - this adventure left me pretty unsatisfied, so I will give it two stars only. There have been worse, but this one just didn't spark any joy.

I had the chance to play this before general availability during UKGE this last weekend. We played in Low Tier with a group of 5.

Since I can't check things in the adventure at this time, this review will have less depth than my usual reviews.

TL;DR: Nice litte adventure with a skill challenge, followed by some combats. Nothing special, but nothing stood out as particularly bad, either.

The good:
- The adventure brings back an old and beloved antagonistic faction. It was fun kicking some Aspis a$$es again :)

The bad:
- Here we go again - someone shouts out accusations against the Pathfinder Society, and people just assume them to be credible or even correct? Why? There was no reason to believe them! The members of the PFS were all still there! How could we be the culprits?!

The ugly:
- Nothing stood out as really bad this time

Overall I would give this scenario 3.5 stars. But since I couldn't find any points that stood out in either direction, I went with the more medium score of 3. I might change my review once I had a chance to read and run the adventure as a GM.

Preface: I played this at low tier with a well balanced group of 4, then read through some parts I had questions about

TL;DR: An interesting and skill heavy scenario where you can skip almost all combats. Two actualy "riddles" that can be solved by the players. The map is not really working well, though. Also: Can run quite short if you are able to skip the combats.

The good:
- I really like "riddles", so whenever something comes up that you, as a player, can actually solve by thinking / combining clues, I am happy. This adventure had two such things. Both were very minor, though.
- There are multiple combats that you can skip by being good at skills or solving aforementioned riddles.
- No Subsystems! YAY!

The bad:
- The map does not fit the adventure at all. It is rather barren and many of the features that are used are just represented by gray stone floor. If ever an adventure needed a custom map, it would be this one!
- There are multiple combats that you can skip by being good at skills or solving aforementioned riddles. Some people WANT combat, so if the group skips them, you might be disappointed.
- We were able to skip all skippable combats and the adventure ran in less than 3 hours that way. A bit short for a whole session

The ugly:
- The "runelord" NPC is OBNOXIOUS! I really hope she does NOT become Venture Captain! I 100% expected some boxes to click for the reporting about how the NPC did, or, even better, ask the players for their opinion on wether she should be considered as VC or not, but those were absent. I fear the worst! Another new Venture Captain that doesn't have any business being one! I kind of agree with that person from the season Intro: The society takes ANYONE nowadays :(

There might be more negative things listed here than positive, but my overall impression of the adventure was pretty good, so the overall score reflects this with 4 stars :)

Preface: I played this at low tier, than DMed it at high tier

TL;DR: What the f*ck happened here? This adventure has SO many issues that it is hard to even evaluate the parts that actually DO work. Things that waste time in an overly stuffed adventure, treasure bundles you can lose by being too efficient, mechanics that don't make sense and missing consequences for failing things. This feels VERY much like a rushed job, and the usually pretty well done premium module even adds more problems and ALSO feels like a rush job. Has the previously planned adventure been replaced last minute with this atrocity?

Usually I do the whole "The good, the bad and the ugly" thing, but honestly, I can't get myself to do that here. My problems with the adventure are documented in this (very much NOT spoiler free) thread: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs6c7hl?PFS2-614-Twice-in-Steel

I played this at High Tier and read parts of it afterwards to confirm some things.

TL;DR: Individual Obstacles are a BAD idea! Other than that: Very basic adventure with not enough explanation of the background.

The good:

- I struggle to find anything about this adventure that I would consider to be actually "good". Some parts were OK or decent, but nothing positive stood out. Well, maybe that this one actually had some challenging fights that didn't feel off or unfair?

The bad:

- What is Greensteeples? Why is it important? Is this one of those adventures where you need to have played other adventures to actually make sense of the setting?

- Who is the guy in the wheelchair at the end? Why would we want to talk to him or even give him those items? That scene didn't make any sense!

The ugly:

- The infiltration in the beginning has several serious issues:
1. The whole group only gets ONE preparation roll? Ooph. So you hardly have any ways to mitigate failures or missing skills
2. There is no scaling for higher numbers of PCs. Since you have to make more rolls (individual obstacles, see next point), you WILL acrue more awareness
3. There are multiple "individual" obstacles in the infiltration. One of them has only two possible skills: Arcana and PFS Lore. While all NEW characters will have PFS Lore, there is a substantial chance that a not-remastered character will play this adventure - especially since having played a specific adventure from an earlier season links to this one. And you need TWO successes on that obstacle. That obstacle alone can lead to a single character amassing a LOT of awareness points!

When we played this adventure, we were six players, all of them experienced and many people with 3-5 GM glyphs among them. The infiltration cost us 10 of our 12 hero points. It was NOT fun!

- WTF is with the art in this adventure? The pictures of Dame Sabina Malatesta and that of the two Maralictors just looks BAD! Especially Marius Salutio!

Conclusion: This is so far one of the worst scenarios in season 6. Not quite as bad as the Godless one, but still not a good experience overall.

I DMed and played this scenario, both times in High Tier.

TL;DR:

A dungeon crawl on a VERY small map. Not much to do besides combat / hazards. Some of the encounters feel off.

The good:

- You are looking for a quick and dirty adventure where you can shut down your brain? You get it here.
This is one of the very few almost pure dungeon crawls I have seen so far in PFS2. If you are into those, this can be a very fitting adventure. If not, play some other scenario ;)

- One of the enemies has a kinda quirky and fun theme

- Rolling a 6 on a particular table of one enemy can be a kind of interesting surprise. I appreciate those unexpected (and not punishing) effects

The bad:

- On of the hazards is quite random in how hard it punishes the group each round. With a bit of bad luck and a group that can't so much to deactivate it, this can go off the rails quickly. Even with a group that has the correct skills, this can take multiple turns, which are kind of bad for everyone else, since they potentially can't do anything

- The map is TINY for the amount of things happening there. When we played, we had a minotaur (large) character in the group. Would not recommend! But even with just small and medium characters, spaces are very tight and sometimes things like difficult terrain make it even harder on multiple melee characters.
Especially in the very beginning of the dungeon, there are multiple things triggered by moving very small distances.

The ugly:

- One enemy has a lighthning bolt and is encountered by opening a doof from a 5' wide corridor - depending on initatives, this can be quite nasty for a group of Level 3 characters!

- The one potential enemy that can be talked to / turned into an ally is not fleshed out enough. What are we supposed to do with them during the adventure? How about after the adventure? Are they still considered to be a danger and has to be dispatched? That part of the adventure is lacking a bit of guidance

Overall: I would give the adventure 3.5 stars. Since the previous reviewer rounded up, I will round down :)

Preface: I played this at the high end of low tier (6 players, 16 CP) and read parts of it afterwards since they felt odd while playing

I would like to give this scenario 2 ratings, but I can not. If I only look at the adventure on its own, the scenes it presents, etc., I would give it three stars. But if I take into account what the main mission actually is, I would give it 1 star. That averaged out to 2 stars in the end.

TL;DR: Nice setting, some fun scenes, variable number of combats, all hidden behind a main mission where we should ask ourselves: AITA? Why are we doing this?

The Good:
- The scene in the bathhouse, besides using the influence subsystem, is really fun. The Auntie has enough personality and the different rooms add a lot of flair to the scene.
- Most of the adventure can be done without violence. There is only one unavoidable fight, with a maximum of three. Of course you need to make some rolls to prevent the other two (if you even want to), but that seems to be the norm nowadays
- The city overall, as well as the setting, are pretty well done. Using an Imugi and other things more based upon Korean mythology instead of the more regularly seen Chinese or Japanese elements was nice to see

The bad:
- The one obligatoy fight feels a bit off. Why does it need to happen at all? We are not really threatening the guy, so him and his good resorting to violence felt weird. Yes, he is a minister in the city - but he was not attacked, etc. - wouldn't it be a legal problem for him to just attack us?
- The possible encounter in the mountains - so, everyone, who doesn't know about the statues (and how to disable them) and uses that road will be killed? What for? How many children have perrished by randomly exploring the mountains?

The ugly:
- WTH are we even doing this mission? Xalreonshin, by all accounts, seems to be GOOD for the city. Valashinaz doesn't care about it. Yet we have to side with him? I understand that the society wants her help, but come on - we are NOT the henchmen of a dragon that doesn't want to lose ground to a dragon that is better suited to actually be there. That is a classic "AITA" situation, and the answer is: Yes!
- In the end, there CAN be an amicable resolution. But not only is that quite hard to achieve, but the rest of the adventure doesn't even assume the characters are TRYING to find something like that. The Influence Thresholds include something that shows, we are making the Imugi's allys doubt them. Why would we do that?

This was honestly the first mission, where right until the end I was contemplating to intentionally fail it (after seeking consent from the rest of the group of course). I know that the society sometimes has to do shady things. But those should probably NOT be normal scenarios / missions. We should do better!

I GMed this for a grroup with 30 CP, so VERY high tier. Will play in about a month and maybe edit the review is something significant changes with that perspective.

TL;DR

A high level scenario with Myhtic rules, that is unclear on some quite important rules / number of enemies. The final fight can be VERY hard.
Backgroundwise: Interesting Story, but in actual play there are not many decisions to be made.
This WILL run long. Took us 6.5 hours to finish
I would give it 2.5 stars if I could, but will round up to three.

The good:
- This is a high level adventure that actually feels high level. You get some myhtic abilities, which give you even more power than usual (but also limit you in some ways - see below).
- I quite liked the background and descriptions of the scenery as well as the introduction, which features three prominent figures, each presented in a distinguishable way.
- The final fight is TOUGH. For groups that like a challenge this is a nice change of pace compared to many other adventures.

The bad:
- The final fight is TOUGH. If you have a group that is not well balanced, or some rolls don't go your way, I can easily see this being a TPK. Especially if you use the number of enemies from the adventure part, not from the appendix
- One of the maps is just a 3x3 of dungeon tiles. And most of the tiles are described in a single paragraph each. Wasn't there a better map for that?
- There is a fight against multiple large or huge enemies in a room that doesn't even fit all those enemies. This is part of the 3x3 tile map - please use maps that have more flair and fit all enemies!
- With four fights, one skill challenge and one skill challenge and/or fight, this adventure WILL run long. High tier fights are already quite lengthy. One less would have been a good thing.
- The description of the adventure as well as the introduction kind of hint at undead as the most probable type of enemy to encounter. Yet only one of the 4 (or 5) fights is actually against those. This can lead to groups that have the wrong spells, etc. prepared for what they will be facing

The ugly:
- The number of a certain type of enemy in the final encounter is listed as (2) in the adventure, but as (0) in the appendix - depending on what you see as the correct number, the fight will play VERY diffetently
- The mythic rules state that you only get what is listed in the handout. Yet the adventure doesn't mention at the usual spot that you should hand out Hero Points. Are they replaced by Myhtic Points? Do you get both? Both might be a bit much, but ONLY MP is quite limited, too, since you cannot use the to reroll flat checks or attack rolls and neither can you burn them to prevent death. The last part is usually covered by being Mythic, but that, too, isn't listed on the handout. There should be some clarification for that!
- The Spell DC of the final enemy is INSANE. Expect many failed / crit failed saves. Some of them against Incapacitation Effects.

(Played the adventure at 28 CP, then read through parts of it)

Summary: I like the fact that there is a real decision to be made. Though it can lead to kind of a huge diagreement at the table, since the choice is one of unknown consquences and based on morals and goals.
The rest of the adventure is more or less a dungeon crawl and a research part. The enemies are, despite being modified, nothing really all too special. One of the final ones, though, is of a type that can be extremely problematic if certain abilities are used.

More in-depth:

The good:
- The adventure tells you that you will go up against undead. And that is exactly what you do. They have a couple of special abilities, but if you prepare for / against undeads, you will be able to use that quite often

- There is a real, impactful choice to be made. Compromise your morals for information on a potentially biggger / more immediate threat

The bad:
- There are some fights in really tight hallways. We had one with 6 PCs and one Animal Companion against 5 or 6 enemies in a hallway of 5 feet width. Fortunately enough we had one melee with a reach weapon and a lot of ranged options, but I can see this being a problem for some groups

- The adventure contains four fights plus two optional ones. Since fights start to take longer at this level range anyways, that can lead to the adventure running pretty long. We skipped on of the optionals and the GM sped things up near the end (and didn't use one particular ability - see below) and we still needed the full five hours!

The ugly:
- The research has no "failing forward" - if your group doesn't have the right skills, you might be stuck at 30% into the adventure. Or you can just keep rolling since

- The research part is missing urgency. There is no maximum number of turns and no consequences for failing until you have everything. If you don't do that, you will lose treasure bundles. And the harder two rooms only allow for one general skill each. So it might take a lot of rolls to finally get there

- One of the enemies has an ability that can completely break a fight. There is no counter available at the level range of the adventure and a critically failed save (or even a few failed ones) can lead to VERY dire situations in a fight that is already pretty tough

I GMed this at high tier.

I REALLY wanted to give this adventure higher marks. And from a player perspective, it might well deserver those. But there are just too many problems that are only noticeable on the GM side for me to give a rating higher than three starts.

The good:

- The scene in the beginning with the different groups and different ideas for "trains" is interesting and can be quite fun to run / play

- The final fight, listed as severe, actually felt like a severe fight

- The scenario has a lot of outstanding artwork

The bad:

- The whole chase scene is utterly pointless - the results don't matter in the slightest bit. Players won't notice that of course, but from a GM perspective, it is purely a waste of time / wordcount. In the end that might even be a good thing since there are always just two skills you can roll, so unless you are lucky and have the perfect group, you will probably lose this chase badly!

- There is no scaling for the interaction with the different groups. The DCs and number of successes needed are the same for a group of 4 level 1 as they are for a group of six level 2 (4x3 and 6x4 respectively).

- There just isn't a whole lot of information about the different train ideas to go on. Which materials are needed? What is the cost? How well does it scale? What are the actual specs (speed, capacity, etc.) - Players can and will have SO many questions that the scenario doesn't answer

- It very much feels like someone very badly wanted to goblins to end up employed at the castle. I can find no other explanation about why all of a sudden the group is asked to deal with the obvious thieves without bloodshed - people have been killed for far less in PFS scenarios! Why do those goblins get special consideration?

- The artwork of the trains doesn't always fit the descriptions well

The ugly:

- Once encounter has contradictory information about the number of enemies

- The obstacle the goblins are supposed to start in during the chase does not exist

- (This one is more personal and will not be taken into consideration for the rating) Can't we just forget finally about the whole connection between Earth and Golarion? It never fit well, and I just wished it would be ignored.

All in all a scenario with a LOT of potential, that is held down by bad editing, wasted opportunities and lack of depth behind the artful decor

We finished our three year journey through the AP yesterday. It had good parts and it had great parts (mostly the earlier books). This last installment was for the most part OK to good. Just the very last battle had an enemy that leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

I mean, if there is ever a place for the abilities that creature had, it HAS to be at the climax of a campaign. But even though - I really didn't like it at all

We won in the end, but the losses were high: 50% of the party will have to be remembered

I DMed this scenario for high tier (6 players, 32 CP)

But overall the rules for the advent

The good:
The idea of the adventure is neat and integrates well with the Godsrain plot. The first part happens in a rather unusual location and has some interesting and gross descriptions.

One of the skill challenges can be surplanted by a little quiz, which is a fun idea.

One of the fights is quite interesting and includes multiple enemies with relevant and useful abilities.

The bad:
The skill challenge in the first part does NOT scale properly for 6 players. It doesn't matter much since the extra bonus you can get is rather small and has no impact on the rest of the adventure.
Up to 20 skill checks are a bit much, though. And if you are unlucky enough that you are not the best in any of the skills, you bascially sit around for an hour or so while other people make skill checks. Yay?

One of the enemies in the otherwise good fight has an interesting ability, that is pretty hard to keep track off, but that can have huge consequences. Depending on the CP adjustment, there can be more than one of those enemies, making it ever harder to track.

The random encounters in the second part are truly a waste of time. Also they do not include ANY scaling between 16 and 32 CP. WTF?

The final fight mentions that you can clearly see the enemy coming from far away but gives no guidance on how to handle long range attacks, etc.

The ugly:
Some skills can only be used by certain CLASSES! WHY?! Why can only Duids and Animists use Nature to analyse a magic thing? What about primal sorcerers, plant summoners, etc.
There are 20+ classes by now. Only a handful are mentioned here and allowed to use skills others can not use for the same challenge. Please NEVER do that again!

A relevant later skill challenge is completely missing an entry for the DC.

The final fight includes hazards that have a pretty stupid routine. Random movement? They ended up doing almost nothing in my run since the were too far away from the characters.

The final enemy has the Mythic trait, yet the adventure doesn't explain that trait and Archives of Nethys doesn't include the War of Immortals yet. So some GMs might be unable to figure out what that means.
The same enemy has an ability that will likely never trigger:

Maybe it was a function of the group I had, but the final fight was over WAY to quickly and never felt challenging at all. The AC of the enemy is just too low and the other enemies are easy to ignore.

Overall I would love to give the adventure 2.5 stars, since one of the fights was really interesting and it has good ideas, but also has a lot of flaws. In the end I decided to give it 3 stars since there are many worse scenarios around.

I played this Scenario in (very) high Tier with 6 Players and read it afterwards.

Overall the adventure is very middle of the road. The premise is OK, the new NPC are a bit cutesy for the kind of adventure the rest is. It was fun playing it, but it didn't have anything to write home about.
The adventure has multiple (lenghty? see below) skill challenges and (usually) four combats, so it can run a bit long.

The good:

The scenario tries something new with skill challenges. Instead of one or two rolls, you get four rolls per Character for some of the challenges. That leads to a more average distribution for successes.

It is interesting that the scenario has two different ways to tackle the mission. One of the few instances where a decision has to be made by the players that actually impacts how the adventure runs.

Many of the combats use the same enemies, which have weaknesses and abilities you can try to work around. That leads to an interesting dynamic of the knowledge from earlier fights making the later ones potentially easier.

The bad:

The scenario tries something new with skill challenges. Instead of one or two rolls, you get four rolls per Character for some of the challenges. That makes every single roll less impactful, diminishing the value of hero points and leading to either very long challenges or them being just a bunch of rolls with little to no description of what you actually do.

It is interesting that the scenario has two different ways to tackle the mission. Why is it not repeatable? And since the GM has no way to know beforehand which option will be chosen, both ways have to be prepared, leading to a siginificant portion of preparation being superflous - and since it isn't repeatable, the average GM won't even use it for a second run.

Many of the combats use the same enemies, which have weaknesses and abilities you can try to work around. But that also leads to them feeling a bit samey. And since there is no way to go shopping or rest between the fights, many people will have little to no way to make use of the additional information they have.

Has the compost thingie ever been mentioned before? I like playing Leshy characters and have never heard of it before. It even feels off that a Leshy would care about what happens to its remains after the spirit leaves the body.

The ugly:

The BBEG has a VERY nasty ability that can not only lead to one (or more) players not being able to really participate in the fight, it can also lead to very swingy combats. Please don't every use that ability on a low level adventure with no way to counteract it!

I played and then DMed this scneario. It is a pretty decent repeatable that takes us back to the Spirit Road for another level 1-4 repeatable in that region.

The setting is fine, there are some decent and interesting NPCs, an optional combat, some skill challenges / role play as well as a short "dungeon" exploration.

What I really like is the fact that there are not only multiple different options for the BBEG, but even two different "dungeons", which I have not seen in a repeatable so far.

What really feels weird is that a divine artefact is that easy to handle. It feels a bit off that something like that shows up in a low level adventure.
The combats, while being variable, are OK, but not great. Nothing people will remember probably.

Overall: Solid repeatable that I would run again

(I played this scenario with a six person party in High Tier and read it afterwards)

Disclaimer: In earlier seasons (1-4), I would have given this one one star. But the fifth season has lowered the floor so low that this scenario is at least not as bad as some other recent ones, earning it a second star.

EDIT: After some later adventures in this season got 2 stars from me as well, I decided to go back to this one and downgrade my rating to 1 star. It wouldn't have been fair to the other scenarios to let them have the same rating

The good

The scenario presents an interesting situation in one of the areas we haven't visited in a while. Though after playing it, I am not sure I want to return there anytime soon.

The bad

Influence Subsystem - not as bad as some other incarnations of the system. The influence skills are mostly "real" skills and not random lores. One of the weaknesses are kind of insane, though

Scaling for player number - NEVER play this with 5 players! You have less total actions in the influence section and the same successes are needed in the skill challenges as with 6 people!
With more than 4 players you also have way more enemies to gain a certain type of point from, and the adventure doesn't seem to account for that

Repeatability - Influence is never a good system. Even less so in a repeatable adventure, since the players potentially already know the skills, resistances and weaknesses and it is very hard to decide if you would have guessed some of that information from the brief dossier you get or if you are metagaming.
There also are no meaningfull differences between runs of this scenario. There are two variants of the least challenging fight, as well as some different skill challenges

Nonlethal Attacks - Not everybody has the option to do nonlethal damage. And even buying Merciful Balm, since there is a lot of stuff happening between combats, you probably have to apply it at the beginning of combat. Most people will also have to draw their weapons, so you are kind of wasting a whole turn (or more) getting ready to even fight - if you have the option of using that balm at all.

The trigger - A repeatable with a serious trigger situation? Why? Was that really necessary?

The ugly

Talking about skill challenges... WTF is up with those DCs? The highest I found was 32 in Low Tier, 35 in High Tier. That is 10+ points higher than the level based DC of the characters playing the scenario! And there is more than one with a DC at 30+. Even many of the other DCs are a couple of points higher than the level based DCs would suggest.
I get that the adventure wants the players to fail (and critically fail) a few of those to acrue some Awareness Points. But there are a couple of issues with that:
1. While there is SOME hints that you are supposed to make a bit of noise (but not too much!), there is no way of knowing how much noise is OK
2. It just feels bad to fail / critically fail so many skill checks
3. Since in most instances, every character has to roll, you WILL get more Awareness Points with more players - Crit Fails automatically generate them. The thresholds in the adventure don't account for that!
4. Many previous scenarios have taught the players that you should try to avoid failing skill challenges too much, since you often lose out on secondard success conditions or treasure bundles this way. Thus a LOT of hero points will be used to try to mitigate the bad rolls until the party realizes that doing that is a waste (or is out of hero points), making the final combat even harder then it already is.

Retributive Strike - There are multiple combats with 4-8 enemies, all of which have Retributive Strike and are primarily melee damage dealers. Not only is that a pain for any GM to keep track of (who has used their reaction already?), it also has huge potential to bog the combat down and give the enemies a LOT of free attacks. RS is fine if one character hast it - it gives you an incentive to attack them instead of their allies. But if everyone has it, it becomes a problem!

(I DMed this in High Tier with 32 CP)

The good:

Storywise, I really like the adventure. There is a lot of foreshadowing, a new, potentially important for the season, NPC is introduced, we meet with a lot of other NPCs - some from this seasons Intro and some known from other storylines or the overall society. All that leads to an experience that is very much anchored in the society and felt much more connected than a lot of other adventures do.
One Encounter is interesting because it offers a thematic special action and a goal other than "kill them all", which I always appreciate.

The OK:

In the first act, there are a lot of skill challenges. Those are fine, but all follow the same structure and feel repetitive after a while.
Also, there wasn't enough Carnival to explore for the characters. No games or activities they could just try for the fun of it. All things happen because they are brought up by meeting other people who need something done. A bit more freedom would have made this carnival feel more alive. I can even see this being a repeatable scenario with different things to do on the carnival!

The bad:

Most of the encounters are just too easy!

The ugly:

The final encounter is borderline unfair and boring for some characters, as well as hampered by scaling that just doesn't work at all. I honestly have no idea how the fight is supposed to happen in a way that the scaling makes any sense.

I GMed this earlier today for a group of 6 at high levels. The adventure is overall pretty decent without being anything special.

The scene the characters witness in the beginning is truly epic in scale and the description vivid and memorable.

After that, though, the adventure is extremly straight forward. Skill Challenge, Encounter, rince, repeat.

On the plus side: Some of the encounters have interesting terrain with fitting enemies, so they don't feel like most other encounters. The final one, at least at high tier and with multiple doggies, can be interesting since the hounds can recharge each others "breath" attack. The big chasm on the map makes movement for enemies and players problematic, though, so it isn't very likely to happen a lot.

My biggest concern with this adventure is that it follows one of my favorite PF2e adventures ever. Mountain of Sea and Sky was just amazing. And this one, while being OK, just isn't. While it does have some callbacks to the earlier adventure (a heap of rubble, some NPCs, some "children" that need rescueing later on), it does very little that really makes use of the themes and feeling of the first adventure at that location. Which is a shame.

Nevertheless - after a less than stellar end to season 5, I am quite happy with how Season 6 started, so this one gets 4 stars from me.

This is by far the worst PFS2 scenario as of yet. The reasons are manyfold and full of spoilers, which is why I posted them in them DM discussion forum and will not repeat them here. You can find my problems with the scenarion here: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4zdry?520-The-Raskshasas-Court

The overall flow and story of the adventure are amazing and the fights are good without feeling too easy or too hard (played at 19 CP).

The only thing that prevents me from giving the scenario the full five stars are the DCs for some skill checks and save DCs. Without someone who is at least expert and has some decent attribute bonus on some skills, they seem to be pretty much impossible. DC 30+ just isn't really doable otherwise.
Doubly bad due to the fact that most classes that use occult magic (which is a big part here) don't have the correct main attribute for the corresponding skill!

I absolutely love the overall idea of the adventure and it has some really fun moments. But the skill challenges all seem to need a rather small subset of skills and since there isn't much besides those you feel pretty useless if you aren't good in any of those.
We played with 5 players and were done in a little under three hours, which is really short for a scenario. Some scene that introduced the NPC that you interacted with later would have been great for variety and even could have increased the impact of some of them being in danger later.

Idea / Story: 5/5
Mechanics: 2/5
Challenge 3/5
Overall Rating: 3.33/5, rounded to 3