Pathfinder Society Scenario #7: Among the Living (OGL) PDF

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A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 1st to 7th level characters (Tiers: 1–2, 3–4, 6–7).

Famed Pathfinder Bodriggan Wuthers disappeared from his dig site beneath the House of the Immortal Son in Taldor's gilded capital of Oppara. Once a grand temple to Aroden, the Immortal Son is now Oppara's most opulent theater. Sent to locate Wuthers, the Pathfinders must attend an opera with members of the Oppara elite in order to gain access to the secretive theater's dig site. When a cult crashes the performance and the nobility change into hideous walking dead, the Pathfinders are forced to choose between finding Wuthers or saving themselves.

Written by Joshua J. Frost

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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An RPG Resource Review

4/5

In this adventure the party is tasked to travel to Oppara to look for a Pathfinder by the name of Bodriggan Wuthers, a renowned discoverer of artefacts who was working on a dig site beneath the House of the Immortal Son opera house, and is over a month overdue with his report of his findings. As it is difficult to get access to the dig site, it's suggested that they attend a performance of the opera - which requires smart dress and fine manners - and sneak off at an opportune moment.

It starts off well enough, with an opulent setting and a modern opera called Among the Living which premieres that night - perhaps the performers are really that bad, or maybe the party is not well up on what is currently fashionable in operatic circles. Then things begin to get worse...

Copious details about the opera house itself are provided, giving a fine setting for the adventure which is remarkably flexible - of the five acts, as long as the first and last occupy those positions the rest can occur in any order as suits your needs and the party's actions. Despite the opening and setting, this is a combat-heavy adventure without much else to do once the 'fun' starts... and although what is actually going on is detailed clearly for the DM, there are limited opportunities for the characters to find out much beyond 'evil cultists at it again' with a lot of zombies thrown in for good measure. The faction missions provide a modicum of light relief, with faction members given tasks that will seem quite strange to everyone else.

As a convention adventure it works quite well, you may feel that it's a bit limited to incorporate into a campaign unless you want the cult to provide recurring adversaries (at which they'd actually be quite useful) or you want to give your party a spectacular introduction to Taldor nobility. It's growing on me a bit as I think about it, but there's no getting away from there being a lot of combat in this one. And who takes their war belt to the opera?


Not great

2/5

Ultra linear. Little room for Rp. Unsatisfying final battle. Was not tempted to play follow up quests. Good gm made it enjoyable to an extent. We were a mix of 1s and 2s.


An acquired taste

2/5

GM'ed, never played.

I incorporated some description from Phantom of the Opera to add a little atmosphere to the opera house. The players seemed to appreciate it.

The Good:

*By the end, the PCs have a very clear idea of how Taldor's ideas of status and culture works.
*Taking PCs out of their comfort zones (adventurers at an opera???) can open the door to interesting RP.
*A mouthy, spoiled NPC allows the PCs a chance to work out some frustration with few consequences (as long as they don't kill him).

The Bad:

*The main map is a sandbox, but a total lack of hints results in an attitude of "we wander around killing things until we happen across where we're supposed to be..."
*Like a lot of Season 0, the combats don't hold up well, but that could be overlooked if they weren't often repetitive as well.

This 1-7 scenario didn't suffer much from level spread, so if you really need to field a table of lvl 1s and lvl 5-7s, this would be a decent choice.

Summary:
I'm glad I ran it, but am not especially interested in the sequels.


A bit simple, but also funny

3/5

I recently played and ran this and had fun.

The fights are a bit old-fashioned, with relatively simple monsters with a couple of potentially nasty abilities. They don't stand up well to modern classes like gunslingers.

The plot is a bit thin, in the "those crazy cultists again" category. But the location has a lot of funny potential. This is season 0, where Taldor is always the butt of the jokes. The nobles are foppish and ineffectual. They need the PCs to save them, but can't resist making snooty comments all the while. I had them applaud and boo the PCs in the middle of a huge brawl.

A note about the map: the map is very big. I used the opera flipmat instead, which was a mistake. You need that huge map to justify the encounters not all bumping into each other.


An opera to die for

2/5

Four normal, non-twink characters with an average party level of 2.75 (rounded to 3) go to the opera to find a dig site.

"It's the opera" the bloodrager says, "I won't need my gear."

After fighting the first group of zombies we try to exit the opera house so we can get the bloodrager's gear. "Overwhelming abjuration magic" prevents us from leaving. The walls and doors are invulnerable to attack and conveniently enough there are no windows.

Both the module writer and DM don't seem to care that people might actually go to the opera without their combat gear. It's the OPERA - not the combat arena. People sing and dance. They don't murder each other in gory combat every time. Regardless, we are forced to continue.

The battles with the zombies and Zyphus cultists get repetitive. Zyphus's clerics are especially annoying. They have heavy picks that do x4 damage on a crit. Fighting them is all about luck. They also have potions of cure moderate wounds that drag the fights out.

We encounter this selfish nobleman who demands that we drop everything and rescue him. The encounter went something like this:

Noble: I demand that you escort me out of here now.
Us: No.
Noble: I am a very important person bla bla. Stop whatever you are doing and escort me out of here.
Us: No.
Noble: I move in high society. I'll report you to bla bla they will punish you bla bla
Us: Are you done?

In retrospect this was probably a roleplaying encounter. It's a pretty poor one though. Who wants to save - or even talk to - a selfish noble who threatens you in the middle of the zombie apocalypse? We leave him there.

We eventually find the dig site and it's large undead guardian. This guardian one-hits three party members into unconsciousness. Two of its attacks hit for 18ish damage. The third crits for over 40.

A cleric appears out of nowhere and hits the 4th party member for 20ish points of negative energy damage. This player didn't even get a perception check to try and detect the cleric.

The adventure ends here. One party member escapes while the other 3 are turned into undead by the cleric. Making the characters undead guarantees their deaths are permanent. Raise dead doesn't work on anyone made undead. The more expensive resurrection has to be used. There is no way that 2nd and 3rd level PCs can afford resurrection.

Net result: 3 permanently dead PCs and one fled.


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I am running this module in a week. Does anyone have any advice or previously done updates for the monsters in this module? If so, can you post them or tell me where to view them? The module is written in 3.5 rules and the new pathfinder rules do not exactly match up with some of the enemies in the module.

Liberty's Edge

Frank Williams 892 wrote:
I am running this module in a week. Does anyone have any advice or previously done updates for the monsters in this module? If so, can you post them or tell me where to view them? The module is written in 3.5 rules and the new pathfinder rules do not exactly match up with some of the enemies in the module.

I ran it a week or so back without any modification and it worked fine.

Grand Lodge

I ran it 2-3 weeks ago and I ran it with minimal changes. All I did was figure out the CMD and CMB on the fly. Very free flowing mod. #49 Among the Dead deals with its fall out.

If you have the time you can really make this really scary. Due to some bad rolls it was almost a TPK, but due to a member of the party getting creative, saved all of the party. (and I didn't have to bend the rules!)


I guess here are more specific questions I had...

they contain minor spoilers so people who have not played this mod should not read them.

Spoiler:
Should the ogre zombie use a weapon or slam attack? Obviously the weapon is WAY more dangerous than the slam.

and...

Spoiler:
I am trying to create the ogre, bugbear, minotaur, and grey render zombies using the pathfinder rules. Do you feel these monsters transfer to fair, fun, and balanced fights using the pathfinder rules?


Don't convert them. Run them as their 3.5 equivalents calculating CMB/CMD on the fly if needed. You can find the 3.5 stats here.

And

Spoiler:
The ogre zombie would likely use his greatclub.

Shadow Lodge

PFS Character 'inspired' by this scenario and since Josh wrote the scenario, a parting tribute to him.


We played this recently with a 6 person party with two pregen's played by inexperienced players. This slowed down the play quite a bit in the early going. I personally did not like the way this adventure railroaded us in the early going.

Specifically:

Plot Spoiler:

We were told that without proper clothing we could not attend - we would literally be thrown out. Brand new characters like our Pregen's did not have enough money to even buy the lowest attire! Our GM was kind enough to permit rental when one of us thought of that option (although at a steep 1/3 normal purchase price) and he also allowed us to take all of our gear under oversized clothing. A bit unrealistic but not irrational given the railroading.

I personally liked the module despite the railroading. The adventure aspect of it was a bit predictable but it flowed naturally and without too much goofy nonesense.

One thing that bugged me about the railroad was:

Plot Spoiler:

The fact that we could not save anyone except for the specifically called out NPC. Also the lack of money and items on the dead made no sense.

Another area that can be a problem in society play is that at a low tier you can end up in trouble in a module like this:

Spoiler:

The DR of Zombie's seems minor but when you have no control over a party and what they bring to the table it can suck. We started with six characters but the pregen character's players had to leave early. The real problem came when we realized that the remaining characters were geared for anything but Zombies. The brawler's primary attacks were unarmed (bludgeoning), the crossbowman (piercing), the cleric (bludgeoning). Luckily the fighter had an Axe (Slashing) and the brawler had a short sword (slashing) and a dagger (slashing). However due to the way the terrain was laid out there was a lot of difficulty bringing concentrated firepower to bear on the problem and the evil clerics healing the zombies and making more was not good given our situation.

On top of the difficulty that some of the encounters could pose for a 4 person group, the terrain at times made for some challenges as well:

Spoiler:

The difficult terrain in the subterranian space was a major problem. Not being able to 5' to reposition in combat without an AoO was a huge issue. My fighter with a 23 AC fighting defensively took AoO x4 crit and went down just trying to stay out of flanked position. The tunnel sections limiting movement and bottlenecks caused which allowed for missile weapons to be shot at us didn't help either.

GM Question:
One question - our GM was unable to find the Death Touch ability defined anywhere - does anyone know what it was supposed to do? He winged it and I think it was fine but it would be nice to know.


GM Question - Answer:

I found out what the Death Touch was:

It's a D&D 3.5 Death Domain ability:
Death Domain
Granted Power
You may use a death touch once per day. Your death touch is a supernatural ability that produces a death effect. You must succeed on a melee touch attack against a living creature (using the rules for touch spells). When you touch, roll 1d6 per cleric level you possess. If the total at least equals the creature’s current hit points, it dies (no save).

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