A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 1st to 5th level characters (Tiers: 1–2, 4–5).
When strange reports of misty undead spread through Absalom, you and your fellow Pathfinders are dispatched to the half-drowned district of Puddles. Notoriously rough, the drooling addicts, flesh panderers, and quick-handed knifers of Puddles are the least of your worries. The night's tide brings with it an ancient armada of some long-forgotten war and you are the only thing between their mist-shrouded ghost fleet and Absalom's utter oblivion.
Written by Michael Kortes
This scenario is designed for play in Pathfinder Society Organized Play, but can easily be adapted for use with any world. This scenario is compliant with the Open Game License (OGL) and is suitable for use with the 3.5 edition of the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game.
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Beginning the entire 'Pathfinder Society' shared campaign with a bang, this adventure sets the heroes the task fo saving Absalom from an ancient and deadly plot many centuries in the making. Now when the plot was originally hatched some 800 years ago, it was swiftly detected and the forces massed against the city defeated... or so it was thought. But one man's meddling nearly brought the city to disaster once more. The stakes are high.
The Pathfinder Society has got wind of this and the adventure starts in media res as the party of young Pathfinders set out to retrieve an ancient codebook from a scholar... only to discover that he has been kidnapped! Success in rescuing the scholar is key to solving this adventure - no advice is given as to what to do if he doesn't survive, so the astute DM will have to ensure that he does or this might be a very short game.
Assuming they are successful in rescuing the scholar, one Yargos Gill, he not only tells them who stole the codebook but reveals that they are using it to raise undead combatants from ancient times... and a mad scramble through the city to thwart their plots ensues. The episodes are a little disjointed, with a brawl in a granary, a visit to an information broker whose price is a spot of safe-cracking and a visit to a temple with exceedingly bizarre worship give the party little time to rest before the final climax of a raid on the individual who is using the codebook to such dire effect.
I've DMed this adventure several times, and it still seems to lurch a little disjointedly: I'm not sure how well it flows from a player perspective (although all mine have enjoyed the game). Fortunately, each individual encounter is well-resourced with appropriate maps, NPC/adversary notes and all you need to run it successfully. By making Gill very talkative - he is a scholar after all, and many such are fond of the sound of their own voices - you can convey sufficient background to cue the players in to what is going on and what they can do about it.
Introducing the concept of 'Factions' which runs throughout the shared campaign, members of each Faction have individualised sub-plot targets to achieve within the context of the main adventure. If you are using the adventure as part of a campaign outside of the series of adventures that make up Season 0 of the Pathfinder Society shared campaign (or even are playing through them as a group with the same DM) there are suggestions of how to carry things through - favours earned or emnity gained - from this adventure to others set in Absalom, a nice touch.
A quite memorable, if slightly flawed, adventure to get the campaign rolling... but possibly not the best thing to start off your own campaign involving members of the Pathfinder Society - bring it in at an appropriate point later on.
There sure are a lot of reviews for the scenario, so I'll do my best to add a new take on it. I've now played and ran this scenario so I'll try to review it from both perspectives.
Overall this is a fun scenario with simple encounters and an interesting puzzle. NPCs add character to Absalom which helps hugely for new players (of which I had 3 when I ran it), but also gave a suitably oppressive atmosphere to the Puddles district.
The first encounter isn't inherently challenging due to the enemies you face but more for the extra count-downesque mechanics going on. When I played, a quick-thinking caster was able to delay the counter and we never had to deal with the results, however because we dealt with the secondary condition first, the fight itself was notably more difficult. When I ran it, the players cleared the enemies first, and just faced the consequences, not wanting to penalize these new players too much I allowed a couple of simple skill checks to deal with their consequences.I also think that this encounter could have benefited from a map, to give some kind of indication of where to place enemies/players/etc.
Encounter two was also fun thanks to the combination of "trapped" squares and difficult terrain, meaning that positioning was a very important part of their strategy and as such the party in both cases had to adjust their strategy accordingly.
I only got to play, not run, the optional encounter due to time constraints. But I felt that the ultra-specific skill check was a little unfair. But I think this was a a teething issue from such an early scenario. Either way, our party handily dispatched the enemies.
The final encounter was a little confusing to interpret, even though I'd played through it previously, I was still a little confused as to the actual layout of the field. The fight itself isn't spectacularly difficult, and it suffers from party members being funneled and blocking each others access, but I assume this was part of the design, in which case it makes sense and uses the terrain to the enemies' advantage.
I thoroughly enjoyed the puzzle segment, both playing it and running it. Watching the party slowly figure out the solution was extremely rewarding. MVP goes to this part.
Taking into account this scenario's status as a season 0, this is a very solid game. While not exactly fantastical by any means, you wouldn't really expect that of a low-level game anyway. Each battle adds a little twist to the combat and forces players to think beyond just "hit it as hard as possible!" which I always appreciate. Definitely a solid entry.
I enjoyed the old-school PFS flavor here, with somewhat over the top NPCs, silly factions and a grandiose plot. Most of the enemies are somewhat feeble but that's not a dealbreaker if the story is just plain entertaining.
Fun scenario and an ideal introduction to PFS for new players. Michael Kortes demonstrates why he is such an able adventure writer by making:
✦ Low level adventurers feel like epic heroes
✦ An unusual first encounter which can be suspenseful
✦ Players roleplay with the most notorious figure in PFS
✦ Puzzles, which earn the Goldilocks seal of approval for being juuuuust right in terms of DC
✦ A unique setting for the optional combat (my players loved it)
✦ A ‘have fun storming the castle’ fight
The variety of encounters kept the players interested all the way through, which makes a GM’s job easier.
Some nitpicks now. The opening scene is awkward and disregards player choice. The Soggy Piper (great name!) just begs to be the opening scene. The scenario mooks are weak – even for a 3.5 scenario. The second fight looks great on paper – but was underwhelming to play and GM. Players avoided the ‘square dots’ on the map like the plague. The amount of GM map and prep time is reasonably high, and it takes a little GM ingenuity to get each of the separate parts to flow seamlessly.
HOWEVER, after 3-4 hours it all boils down to whether the players had fun … and by Gyr of Gixx, mine did! Would I run Silent Tide again? In a heart-beat. ☆☆☆☆
Level 1 Suli Elemental Knight, Level 1 Sylph Empiricist, Level 1 Oread Shaitan Binder (Eidolon was a biped armed with a naginata), Level 2 Sylph Lunar Oracle (Animal companion was an owlbear thanks to a certain boon)
There is something for everyone to do:
combat:
Even if the enemies on low tier fall over if you touch them, the misschance from the obscuring mist was more than enough to prevent for us to prevent them from being complete walkovers, as we kept rolling too low on the misschance to actually land hits.
Combat optimized players will find this a pushover and probably get bored.
roleplay:
There is a nice encounter with a certain grandmaster, there is a scholar who can provide some interesting talks and even the final encounter can provide some amusement.
puzzles:
At one point you're requested to solve five puzzles. You need to succeed at three of them to progress. These rely as much on player ingenuity as having some luck with the dicerolls and/or having the correct classes present. In our case luck was with us and the dice were favorable.
Without the happystick of the oracle this scenario would have been a lot more threatening, as several of us got hit quite a few times.
All in all a very good scenario to start a new character's career with if you haven't played it yet.
So my group out here in Kuwait is a little behind the power curve (and just got society characters built last week), so we're just now playing through this.
All I can say is "Wow!!!!"
I don't want to spoil it, but the four of us almost died around nearly every corner (and loved every minute of it)!!! We had a well-round group (fighter, cleric, sorcerer, and rogue), all first level, and this kept us alternating between laughter/cringe for nearly 6 hours! We can't wait to play through more!!
However, I was wondering about the last page detailing the Scenario details. I believe there is an error, but I'm not sure where to report it or how to verify it:
Spoiler:
I ran a group of 4 players through the Tier 1-2 of this Scenario. The Chronicle indicates that the total "Max Gold" was "453;" however, I believe it should be 553 Gold. Let me explain:
Act I Rewards:
Tier 1-2: Give each player 53 GP
Act II Rewards:
Tier 1-2: Give each player 128 GP
Act III Rewards:
Tier 1-2: Listed under Development is indicated that if the PCs open all 5 of the safes, then they are awarded 100 GP each
Act IV Rewards:
Tier 1-2: Give each player 5 GP
Act V Rewards:
Tier 1-2: Give each player 267 GP
Total = 53 + 128 + 100 + 5 + 267 = 553 GP
What I believe is that the Max Gold on the Chronicle ignores the potential reward for Act III.
Any suggestions? I have 1 player that wants to play at GENCON and I want to ensure his Character Sheet is correct in detail.
So my group out here in Kuwait is a little behind the power curve (and just got society characters built last week), so we're just now playing through this.
All I can say is "Wow!!!!"
I don't want to spoil it, but the four of us almost died around nearly every corner (and loved every minute of it)!!! We had a well-round group (fighter, cleric, sorcerer, and rogue), all first level, and this kept us alternating between laughter/cringe for nearly 6 hours! We can't wait to play through more!!
...Ok, you all only died a few times near the end. I must say as a DM, that a Sorcerer with Color Spray is rather devastating to lower level NPC characters...sigh.
I didn't want to give this scenario a poor review, because I really did enjoy running it. That said, this one needs to be put on the fast track for updating to the PFRPG standard. It was far too easy for the level one characters, and a joke for the ones that were level 2.
Every enemy faced except for three died in one hit to characters that aren't really optimized for melee The end guy died in two, and one thug and one Black Echelon goon were lucky enough to only be taken down to 1hp the first time they were hit. These were fairly new players making typical new player mistakes such as not using Power Attack, even after learning the pathetically low AC of the enemies, not using flank tactics or charges unless prompted.
Again, I think the core of this scenario is sound, and the players seemed to enjoy the story even though they thought (rightly so) that if Silent Tide wasn't any tougher than Black Echelon, that the city wasn't in any real danger. If this scenario is not going to be updated to PFRPG rules soon, at least consider allowing GMs the freedom to do the updates themselves.
