Pathfinder Society Scenario #3-08: Among the Gods (PFRPG) PDF

Gods is mostly combat and exploration with some skill checks and a little investigation.

I can see why players are displeased with Gods. No one likes effects that reduce your stats, and this scenario features a non-core mechanic that makes it inevitable (which irritates players who invested feats to counter it). So you're either going into a deadly combat severely penalized or someone has the foresight to spend 2000+ gold to repair your stats.

This scenario had a lot of weak encounters in it that were not really satisfying. The main encounter is long and could be viewed as annoying by some players (if your stats are affected it makes it worse), but I thought it was the best part of this scenario.

While I had fun with the monster of the week format of this one, the altitude rules are harsh, but so is the altitude, but should you players have any experience, or knowledge they will know that climbing the mountains might make them a long short...

Apart from that, the tension was sorely lacking in this one, and while it shows it age a little, it wasn't as bad as many people have made out. With a table of 4 at low tier we were still done inside of 3 hours, so it makes for a short scenario.

The Good:
It did feel like a challenge. Perhaps in the worst possible way, but still a challenge. I also kind of enjoy a wilderness adventure now and again, but I should have read the description more carefully and not brought along my Intrigue character.

The Bad:
All three encounters were horribly difficult, especially if you had a couple level 3 characters or pregens at your table (the group almost wiped at every encounter, save for the last one wherein we just ignored the undead and converged on the caster, making it something of a cake-walk).

The Ugly:
The cultists could have been better foreshadowed in enough encounters (a religion check on the traps using picks would have been nice; heck, have the altar in the second map be defiled by picks). I was shocked the snowbank above the campsite didn't collapse on us in the middle of the night; It might have actually made for a more balanced encounter in a weird way: giving us a potential opportunity to ambush the Chimera by delaying when we pop out of the snow (at least we could put our armor on in a makeshift snow-cave).

TLDR; Mod sucked, our GM great. Don't play if there's another choice. GM only if you have no ill intent in your soul (and are a generally kind GM by other peoples reckoning).

This mod was SO bad I felt compelled to write a review. The GM was very nice. He had suffered when he played it so he knew the players pain. I read the adventure through after playing it.

While it's true that there are many "not-often-used" rules that are "in the book". PFS (and many home games) tend to use a sub-set of the FULL RULES. I agree it CAN BE enjoyable when adventures use some of those parts of the rule set that aren't often seen.

However, this scenario is written and such a way that it begs the GM to abuse the players. There are rules in the GMG for the situations in the mod(traps, altitude and so forth), that the mod disregards the GMG in favor of the rules given in the mod.

"Mean" is a correct word to use when describing this adventure. It seems the author and most of the players/GMs that I've talked to or read about have a very different version of the word "fun" than the author does. PFS is supposed to be FUN first.

The basic theme appears to be: beat down the players with situations that are so uncommon or unannounced they won't be prepared for them. Then once they are beaten down use encounters that would normally be challenging. This results in what appears to be WILDLY over CR encounters (when counting in all factors and not use the CR of the creatures).

The amount of grey area wiggle room for the GM is very large. At a home game with known players and known GMs less of a problem. At a large con with very different players and GMs this could easily be a TPK (i.e. NOT FUN).

Imagine an entire adventure filled with six-armed, grappling monkeys that see in the dark and can breath water. That's bad. Also the encounter takes place in the bottom of a magically darkened, water filled mine shaft. VERY Bad. That's a bit of poetic exaggeration, but you get the idea.

This mod needed WAY more editing and thought ESPECIALLY with the rewards given. I wish I could give a zero star review.

Kizan

This scenario is the most mean spirited one I've encountered since 5-20.
It introduces two custom rules that only exist to give the middle finger to PCs.

#1: Traps. Apparently, in this scenario traps can only be detected if we are using a scout. Regular perception checks and "we're looking for traps" doesn't work. For whatever reason one person has to go ahead of the rest of the group to "scout" to find traps. We only find this out after setting off a trap of course.

#2: High altitude. One of the party members had the boon from 7-06 that allowed them to function at high altitude without penalty. The GM said that the boon didn't apply because this scenario uses "custom altitude rules" not covered by the boon.

It was interesting how none of the creatures we encountered were suffering from the altitude effects like our party was. There was probably a 3rd custom rule covering that.

This is enough to give the scenario one star. Simply put, playing this scenario was a rotten five hours.

Note: I've read the other reviews for this scenario. None of them mention the custom rules. I'm not sure what to say about that.