Pathfinder Society Scenario #14: The Many Fortunes of Grandmaster Torch (OGL) PDF

2.50/5 (based on 28 ratings)

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

When four statues of unspeakable power were found in a tomb in Osirion and then stolen, the Pathfinder Society assumed they were gone forever. When they appeared again in the illicit inventory of a Qadiran smuggler in the massive trade city of Sedeq, the Society wasted little time dispatching you there to recover them. Finding the smuggler dead and a familiar face from Absalom responsible, your task quickly becomes a race to retrieve the statues before their brutal power can be unleashed on the citizens of the Satrap. Can you find the statues in time or will Sedeq be swallowed in a plague like none Golarion has ever seen?

Written by Jonathan H. Keith

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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2.50/5 (based on 28 ratings)

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The Many Plot Devices of Grandmaster Torch

2/5

This, I tell you, could have been done so much better I can't even begin to tell. Instead, possibly due to the absurd page limit, the scenario is just another scripted combat encounter after another. They repeat themselves to oblivion, and frustrate the players.

If you are going to run this, come up with something much more interesting. Replace maps, tactics, and add possibilities for diplomatic approaches. That's what this needs, since I doubt your first reaction in an urban environment is to blast everything into smithereens.


Some issues coming up in play.

2/5

Grandmaster Torch was popular when he first showed up, but this adventure seems to use him just to use him again, as he isn't in the same place or situation he was in originally, and can easily be mistaken for the guy that the PCs are suppose to bust.

Faction mission, if taken literally and if the PCs aren't looking for a specific instance to come up, but taking the mission at face value, can cause some PCs to read what they are suppose to do as committing major crimes, which is suppose to be discouraged and potentially treated the same as death.

Same faction mission frames the other PCs for the chaos caused and as agents of a foreign power, which seems to go against the "don't work against the other PCs" spirit, even if they don't immediately suffer consequences.

Finally, there is a bit of a lack of challenge in many of the encounters in the scenario.


Ok, but needs more challenging fights

4/5

The overall plot was good and the story was interesting. But..
Spoiler alert
Encounter 4 is WAY too easy for the bad guy to get away. Properly run, there is no way he is not, unless the players are a little suicidal. As a DM I had to slow down the bad guy in the interest of fairness. Also if a person has a pathological aversion to something, give them ways to avoid it once it happens (without giving something away)

The final fight was the most interesting, but one of my players (the min-max guy) didn't like being robbed of his players role. I thought it was great, but it is a proper warning for a player.

The upside is that the faction goals were not too easy and they were fun. The factions are making the game more interesting and the best selling point.
Overall it would be nice to see an enemy's armor classes be a tad bit higher. Men in light armor with 10 dexterity are appearing too often, esp. for 2nd level.
A low level spell caster once in awhile would be great. We prefer human opponents to monsters as a group, but we hope that that they are more than yet another warrior.
The use of terrain in this mod to challenge players is great and should be used more often.
Overall a good module.


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Now available!

(Actually, available last Wednesday, but we didn't say so here.)

Sovereign Court

Hey, not fair Josh! In the UK we have been away at Conception running the Pathfinder Organized Play for the last five days. (It was great and all the 5 slots I ran were 200 percent over subscribed by players.)

I would have snapped up these two recent modules with the rest of my January purchases and used the voucher you sent out. Now I try to buy them and the "Add to shopping cart" doesn't work and the expiry date has passed. Why didn't you make these new modules public last Wednesday?

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Angel Gabriel wrote:
...the "Add to shopping cart" doesn't work...

Sorry—I broke that earlier today. It's fixed now.

Angel Gabriel wrote:
Why didn't you make these new modules public last Wednesday?

They were available. I was too busy last week to send out a notifying e-mail, but we did mention them in our store blog all weekend. We just didn't create a discussion thread here.

The last Wednesday of each month is the scheduled date for all scenarios, by the way. (I can't promised they'll never be late, but that's the scheduled date, and Josh and crew work hard to meet it.)

The Exchange

Vic Wertz wrote:
Angel Gabriel wrote:
...the "Add to shopping cart" doesn't work...

Sorry—I broke that earlier today. It's fixed now.

Angel Gabriel wrote:
Why didn't you make these new modules public last Wednesday?

They were available. I was too busy last week to send out a notifying e-mail, but we did mention them in our store blog all weekend. We just didn't create a discussion thread here.

The last Wednesday of each month is the scheduled date for all scenarios, by the way. (I can't promised they'll never be late, but that's the scheduled date, and Josh and crew work hard to meet it.)

They were only available for pre-order when I checked earlier and now they are available for actual download so they would never of been eligible for the holiday discount.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Wintergreen wrote:
They were only available for pre-order when I checked earlier and now they are available for actual download so they would never of been eligible for the holiday discount.

That was just a display issue; the product was indeed available for purchase. (You can't actually preorder a PDF on our site.)

Liberty's Edge

Wait, tier's 3-4 and 6-7?!?! What happened to tier 4-5?

The Exchange

I played this at Pandemonium this weekend. Overall it was fun, but I had real ethical problems with my faction's assignment. Rather than commit a purely evil act (and as a cleric risk serious alignment infraction) I declined the opportunity. I know Pathfinder is morally grey, but are good aligned characters simply not practical? It was only my 3rd Pathfinder, and the GM was fantastic.


NotMousse wrote:
Wait, tier's 3-4 and 6-7?!?! What happened to tier 4-5?

This is Tier 1-7, meaning it plays in Tiers 1-2, 3-4, and 6-7. If your APL (average party level) is 5, you can choose either Tier 3-4 or Tier 6-7.


GamerChick wrote:
I played this at Pandemonium this weekend. Overall it was fun, but I had real ethical problems with my faction's assignment. Rather than commit a purely evil act (and as a cleric risk serious alignment infraction) I declined the opportunity. I know Pathfinder is morally grey, but are good aligned characters simply not practical? It was only my 3rd Pathfinder, and the GM was fantastic.

There will occasionally be missions that PCs won't want to do and that's totally okay. We didn't create the faction missions to be guaranteed successes every time--whether that's from a PC morality choice, a skill roll, etc. You should be able to succeed at more than 75% of your missions in a season, but we don't guarantee any amount.

The Exchange

Joshua J. Frost wrote:
GamerChick wrote:
I played this at Pandemonium this weekend. Overall it was fun, but I had real ethical problems with my faction's assignment. Rather than commit a purely evil act (and as a cleric risk serious alignment infraction) I declined the opportunity. I know Pathfinder is morally grey, but are good aligned characters simply not practical? It was only my 3rd Pathfinder, and the GM was fantastic.
There will occasionally be missions that PCs won't want to do and that's totally okay. We didn't create the faction missions to be guaranteed successes every time--whether that's from a PC morality choice, a skill roll, etc. You should be able to succeed at more than 75% of your missions in a season, but we don't guarantee any amount.

OK, that's fair enough. :) I don't ever expect 100%.

The Exchange

Ran this for a group during MegaCon 2009, just after running Silent Tide for the same group. Was neat to see a continuing character and be able to breath life into it. The group did really well with the exception of a misfired alchemist fire in a certain room making the whole town dive for cover as the refinery went ka-boom! Awesome!
Everyone survived, and had a great time. Definitly some return business here for the new players in the party. Eagerly looking forward to GenCon this year and running some more of these.

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Can this scenario still be played in light of Rivalry's End?

Silver Crusade

Is there a sequel to this where GT calls in his marker? If so I'd like to know so I can request my GM to run it.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Yup, Torch calls in his favor in 1-45 Delirium's Tangle.

Shadow Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Lord Fyre wrote:
Can this scenario still be played in light of Rivalry's End?

What this guy said. I've got an ex shadow lodge character I'm playing and I'm wanting to know if this is a good scenario to run him with in light of the fact that, after rivalries end he's kind of looking to kill Torch or bring him to justice.

Scarab Sages

Torch is fast, Torch is cool...

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

1 person marked this as a favorite.
doc the grey wrote:
Lord Fyre wrote:
Can this scenario still be played in light of Rivalry's End?
What this guy said. I've got an ex shadow lodge character I'm playing and I'm wanting to know if this is a good scenario to run him with in light of the fact that, after rivalries end he's kind of looking to kill Torch or bring him to justice.

You point out a serious problem with the way the Shadow Lodge was dissolved. It left a lot of hatred for Torch, this effectively invalidates earlier scenarios like this one.

Of course, I also feel that disbanding the Shadow Lodge was a mistake. It provided a good foil for the Grand Lodge faction.

Sovereign Court

Lord Fyre wrote:
doc the grey wrote:
Lord Fyre wrote:
Can this scenario still be played in light of Rivalry's End?
What this guy said. I've got an ex shadow lodge character I'm playing and I'm wanting to know if this is a good scenario to run him with in light of the fact that, after rivalries end he's kind of looking to kill Torch or bring him to justice.

You point out a serious problem with the way the Shadow Lodge was dissolved. It left a lot of hatred for Torch, this effectively invalidates earlier scenarios like this one.

Of course, I also feel that disbanding the Shadow Lodge was a mistake. It provided a good foil for the Grand Lodge faction.

You may be right in the fact that it may have invalidate this one, but think about life... sometimes we think we are on one path and then something happens that changes that path. My players loved this scenario because it told the beginnings, (This area has only been organized since January and started with Season 5 stuff, so I have been taking them on a trip through season 0 and season 1 scenarios AND story arcs. The first arc, they loved. This one I believe that are loving as well... :D

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