Pathfinder Society Scenario #3-09: The Quest for Perfection—Part I: The Edge of Heaven (PFRPG) PDF

"All Aboard!"

That means it's a railroad. That said... the location is neat...highest mountain in the world, but other than some writing in Tian, wasn't screaming "THIS IS TIAN XIA!" The environmental dangers were pretty brutal. Apart from the boss combat, the encounters were pretty easy. Boss combat could be brutal if not played wisely.

Paizo has thrown down the gauntlet. Yes, the challenge level of scenarios has been increased substantially in Season 3. Girly girl PCs need not apply when adventuring in groups of 4. I feel this scenario was designed for a group of six veteran players with well-made PCs.

Heaven is very combat centric and the combat encounters are both interesting and well designed.

This scenario is not an appropriate introduction to PF for new players with level 1 PCs. In this scenario, even if you win, it's likely that someone is going home in a body bag (ignoring fudging and GMs ignoring helpless PCs). If you took the four level 1 pregens (Valeros, Merisiel, Ezren, Kyra) and played this scenario, I don't think they're making it out alive. Needless to say, your group should think twice about playing up.

When we asked for increased challenge, I would have preferred if the challenge level was increased moderately. In season 1, some subtier 1-2 bosses have an average potential damage of 9 damage with an unlikely chance to hit (Citadel of Flame). The bar has now been raised to an average potential of 46 damage per round (with a likely chance to hit). Do I think it's way over the top? H*** yes.

In addition to the combat encounters, I also enjoyed the environmental effects of the scenario, which makes it more "realistic" and illustrates the need for non-combat spells / feats. I thought the bridge was good too, although some GMs/players won't feel the same way (my GM cut it out).

Even a hint (a paragraph or a single incident) of something different about Tian Xia compared to Absalom would have been welcome. I think local flavor is a very important part of any scenario, and I don't necessarily feel that every GM should have to read every source book to give their players a taste of the locale.

Length: Fits into a 4 hour slot easily. Could be done much faster depending on how well the GM is prepared.
Sweet Spot: Both subtiers are good, but I prefer subtier 4-5 for the expanded boss abilities.
Experience: Player at subtier 1-2 with six (level 2) PCs. I'm GMing Heaven soon as well.
Entertainment: It's combat centric, but it's still a good time. (8/10)
Roleplay: The roleplaying aspects of this scenario are going to be dependent on the GM to add fluff. The guides should have tried to travel with us a little farther, to act as a foil, comedic relief, and possible cannon fodder. (2/10)
Combat/Challenges: I thought the encounters were challenging and unique for a travel scenario. (9/10)
Maps: Good use of flips maps and unique maps. (8/10)
Boons: The boon is in Part 3, although you need to play all 3 parts to get it. (n/a)
Uniqueness: Unique for a travel based scenario. (9/10)
Faction Missions: Average, but perhaps they did the best they could with this type of scenario. (6/10)
Overall: Enjoyable travel centric scenario designed for tough/normal PCs. (8/10)

I think 'The Edge of Heaven' will be an enjoyable journey for most groups, but maybe not so much for the guy who leaves in a bodybag.

It should be noted that I have not read this scenario, only played it. That said, that play-through wasn't terribly interesting. We ran it with a table of 5 (with a sixth player joining in the middle of the second fight), at tier 4-5. At our average party level, with access to second-level spells and many fist-level castings, we found the environmental factors trivial to deal with. By the time we reached the monastery, only our Paladin was fatigued, and that was down to natural 2 or 3 on his last Fortitude save. The environmental factors are probably bigger, well, factors at the lower tier, when the PCs just don't have the resources and capability to handwave them away.

Putting the PCs below enemies on clifftops, or between enemies and a long fall, was a nice touch for the second and third fights. The last two fights could have been handled better. Our party two-shotted most of the enemies in the fourth fight, and overwhelmed the boss with action advantage. Combining the two fights into one would have helped to mitigate this. Revealing that the "demon" living up in the monastery was something...entirely different in the opening text was also, I think, a mistake. The monastery encounters might have gone very differently if we were prepared for something other than what we found. As it was, we had three near-deaths: my wizard, the under-leveled magus, and the summoner's eidolon.

There wasn't much roleplaying between PCs and NPCs to be had. Our GM had the guides stay behind at the base camp without much discussion on the subject, though to be fair we got the map and we probably would have been fine with letting them stay. It didn't help that none of us could speak Tien. But that left the monsters as the only creatures with which we could interact until the denoument, and they weren't interested in talking. Having to protect the guides might have added wrinkles to the not-very-challenging second and third fights, and they could have had interesting things to say about the Two Brothers and the shrines instead of the information being revealed through Knowledge checks.

Overall it was a decent adventure, and to be fair it was more fun in the moment than it is looking back, but it wasn't terribly interesting or flavorful.

Disclaimer - I played the scenario, but haven't read it. In addition, my judge was a veteran player with little DM experience so that may have affected my experience.

For the first PFS module set in Tian Za, there was no local flavor in the entire module. You would think they would try to emphasize the difference between Tian Za and the other regions, but this one could have been set in Cheliax since we didn't get any local color.

The module starts out with 2 1/2 hours of rolling climb checks with two trivial fights included and culminates with hourly fortitude checks to become fatigued or exhausted prior to a horrendous combat. We had one PC death and it should have been at least three. It's possible that our judge misread the climb check rules because I can't concieve of anyone including four encounters worth of climb checks in a module. It did manage to hose the human cavalier in our party (the reason all you see in PFS is halfling cavaliers on dogs), but the judge generously allowed us to haul my medium tiger up numerous cliffs etc.

This is probably the worst PFS module that I played and the only reason it received a second star is because I think a more experienced judge would have thrown out much of the climb check tedium which among other things would have allowed more time at the monastery.

Not much role-playing here. The majority of the adventure is simply traveling through the mountains to your goal, but some interesting locations for battles keeps things interesting.