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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If you are the type of GM that likes to be a jerk, stacking the deck against the PCs and then increasing the penalty for failure, then you've found your scenario.
As other reviewers have mentioned, the NPCs use picks. On a confirmed crit, it is highly likely that a PC will die.
The strategy used on the end fight also gives double the normal penalty.
BBEG:
will cast Animate Dead on anyone who dies. This is bad for two reasons. First it can cause a cascade failure since it turns an ally into an enemy. That greatly increases the chance of a total party kill. Secondly, it means you need to pay for a resurrection if you want the fallen back -- which costs a little more than twice as much.
I am torn between 3 and 4 stars for this scenario.
We played it this afternoon with 5 players in low tier, one person at the table completely new to pathfinder, two others played 1 or 2 scenarios, and I was there to support the GM in helping to promote Society play.
Party composition:
Elven ranger 1, Halfling ranger 1, Human barbarian 1, Half-orc bloodrager 2, Human Fighter 2
The introduction and reason for going to the Operahouse were done efficiently, introducing the newer players to how most scenarios start.
Then came the first roleplay wave, finding a way to get into the opera with as much of our gear as possible. We managed to get the weapons from the fighter and the barbarian in, by having the fighter pose as a noble who wouldn't go anywhere without her family weapon (heirloom trait, coupled with dressing up as a member of minor noble house from Absalom) and the barbarian as her bodyguard. For the others we simply procured weapons after the zombies started coming in.
Even though it's really easy to simply walk straight to the BBEG here, that kinda means you're ignore the explore part of the Society credo. Normally you don't get to visit the Operahouse, so why not take the time to explore it.
The story itself is rather short, but the location makes up a lot for it in my opinion.
The reason I'm torn between 3 and 4 stars is that while it's a great scenario for introducing pathfinder society play to new people, the x4 crit weapons have a (tiny) chance of simply killing one of said new players. Killing new players is a bad thing, as it may result in them not coming back.
Overall though as long as you have players who aren't going in as murderhobos intent on killing everything as fast as possible, but are willing to roleplay, this makes an awesome scene.
While this adventure tries hard to give the feeling of a classic zombie movie the combats just aren't challenging enough to give it the proper flavor. The PCs never really feel as if they might be overwhelmed by the undead hordes. Unfortunately, failing in it's main objective just doesn't leave much of an adventure other than a few role-playing opportunities.
This is quite a good adventure. I like the enclosed environment and the strong zombie movie feel. As a player I found it rather tough but we had a weak mix of classes. Running it as a GM I found that with the right party mix it works just right. My only grumble was the map lay out. There really is no need for awkward shaped rooms.
This is my pick of the best of the 3 "Among" scenarios in the trilogy.
The difficulty in this scenario is pretty crazy, and I don't believe it's because it's a season 0. Admittedly, my 6-player group played this at 3-4 with a combination of character levels ranging from 1 to 5, so that might be why.
Spoiler:
I'm not sure how it happened, but splitting the party and taking two encounters at once actually benefitted our split party by making the experience more enjoyable. I can't imagine it being much fun if we tried to take them on with 6 people x2. In any case, this made the environment of the opera house much more of an epic.
The basement was a different story, and this makes up for the easy difficulty on the ground level. It's a tough encounter that probably self-corrects its difficulty between a 4 player or 6 player party. It's for this encounter alone I don't recommend level 5 characters teaming up with level 1 and 2 characters in a tier 3-4, especially if playing with a rough-and-tumble GM.
Ultimately this is a pretty good scenario if you don't mind a pure dungeon crawl with a small slice of Taldan flavour. Bring a comedy bard with you.
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 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.
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!)
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?
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.
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).
