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Pathfinder Society Scenario #3-21: The Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment (PFRPG) PDF

4.50/5 (based on 41 ratings)
Pathfinder Society Scenario #3-21: The Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment (PFRPG) PDF

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A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 1–5.

In order to learn about the esoteric faith of the Empyreal Lord Korada, the PCs are sent by the Pathfinder Society to explore an abandoned aasimar temple to the benevolent deity. But what they find there is anything but an opportunity for peaceful reflection and enlightenment.

Written by Ron Lundeen.

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 Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

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4.50/5 (based on 41 ratings)

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so much fun to run

5/5 —

this is one of my favourite PFS scenarios to run. I love the religious aspect of it, the NPCs are great, and it's so easy to keep the players off-kilter. secret rolls, delayed onset effects, and nefarious unintentional heresies that come back to haunt the party later. it's a work of absolute beauty!

great (with a good gm)

5/5 —

to start off, don't run this cold. there are plenty of other things that are easy to run cold, and this scenario deserves better. the players will hate it, you will be confused why people are doing things, its just not going to go well.

that being said, properly prepared by a gm that knows how to give the npcs life here, it is prolly the best investigative sandbox scenario in pfs.

i can see some players who like dungeon crawls being disappointed with this scenario, but i feel that the boss fight should have enough payoff for them (what a tough fight!)

Excellent setting, story and scenario.

5/5 —

This scenario was probably the one I've been wanting to play the most for about half a year now. Due to circumstances, I wasn't able to and so I waited and waited. Luckily my friends bailed me out and made sure I could play it before my planes-loving summoner became too high level. Friends are the best, aren't they?

As for the scenario, I loved it. Considering I love role-play-heavy scenarios, that is no real surprise. There was role-play, investigating and combat, albeit that the emphasis is on the first two. There's just a brilliant atmosphere. First you have a suspicion that things are not what they seem to be. It's not before you know something is wrong and slowly you unravel an evil plot that may not be terribly original, but is still incredibly effective at telling a compelling story. Every little detail builds on it and makes it more and more creepy, until you finally are confronted by evil in its true form.

That said, I have to say that this scenario is not for everyone. Murderhobo's need not apply. Sadly I had one in the party and he complained about it a lot. It ruined the mood a bit, at least for me. It was still enjoyable, but it didn't live up to its full potential. That's not the scenario's fault though and I highly recommend it. Be sure to bring a full party, as the fights can be nasty without that, and tell the fight-only players to stay away. If you do, I'm sure you'll have a grand time.

Fantastic PFS module

5/5 —

Fantastic PFS module with plenty of details to keep everyone entertained. Good combats and plot discovery. Highly recommended.

Abandoned Temple? Mysterious Demiplane? I'm in.

5/5 —

Perspective: played once, GM'd once

This scenario is just all-around awesome. The mission and setting 'fits' the Pathfinder Society in a way that a lot of other scenarios don't: you're actually being sent as archaeologists, and that holds throughout the growing sense of unease, the various hazards, the almost limitless RP opportunities, and the challenging combats -- all the way through to the very end.

Easily one of the best out there.

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Announced! Cover image is a mockup.
Lantern Lodge

Curious... Is this in the Tian Xia Region ?
Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy

Sort of. The temple is of Tianjing origin, but beyond that I don't want to give anything away.

Now available!

Congrats Ron!
Larcifer wrote:
Congrats Ron!

Thanks, Larry! I'm excited about this adventure. Some people remarked that my ” Tide of Twilight” was a bit linear in the combats and light on the roleplay/investigation. This adventure is sort of the opposite of that.

Lantern Lodge

Just ran this for a group of five the other day and had a few questions if you're willing to answer them.

Spoilers within!:

1) When it comes to how the Heresy Points act during the encounter with Dakang, can I get some clarification on that. That one description stated 'for every Heresy Point a PC has, he must reroll twice.' That doesn't mean that if one of the PCs participated in all four heretical practices, he has to reroll the attack 8 times in the first round? The paragraph does mention 'at the beginning of combat' so does that just mean for the first round or what? I modified it during playthrough because I was slightly confused by it, and I put each Heresy representing a different trait. Herey #1 (as I'm calling it) applied to Attacks, #2 to saves, and so on. Anyways, what was your original intention with that?

Secondly, I want to compliment you on the scenario. I absolutely and 100% loved it, but being a more heavy roleplay scenario, it really pushes the boundaries of the time standards that PFS has, and as such, might easily be ran by less experienced folk. Hopefully not, but its a possibility and I just wanted to throw that out there, so people now.

Other than those two quirks, I want to compliment you one last time on an outstanding experience - for both my players and for me as GM.
Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy
4 people marked this as a favorite.
Severed Ronin wrote:

Just ran this for a group of five the other day and had a few questions if you're willing to answer them.

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:

Let's assume Valeros, a fighter PC, has 3 Heresy Points. In the final conflict with Dakang, Valeros would need to roll twice on his first 3 d20 rolls of the encounter.

  • In round 1, he charges Dakang, and thus only gets a single attack, He rolls two d20s and takes the lower of the two rolls, to which he adds his normal attack bonus. This accounts for 1 of the 3 Heresy Points.
  • When Dakang's turn comes up, he channels negative energy, requiring Valeros to make a Will save. Again, he rolls two d20s and takes the lower of the two results. This is Heresy Point number 2.
  • On the next round, Valeros makes a full attack with two weapons. Since he's already used 2 of his 3 Heresy Points, only his first attack in the round requires two rolls. So with his main hand, he rolls twice and takes the lesser of the two results, then rolls his off-hand attack normally. Now he's used up all 3 of his Heresy Points.
  • All remaining d20 rolls during the encounter are handled normally, with only a single roll.
Lantern Lodge

Without quoting a thousand spoilers, I'll simply say thank you for te clarification. I feel more confidant running it this next time.

When presenting evidence to the guards of the corruption, does the DC drop by a certain amount per piece of evidence presented?

I'm running this tomorrow and going to go with a +4 bonus per piece. If they gather everything, it should be a gimmie.
Lantern Lodge
Wraithcannon wrote:

When presenting evidence to the guards of the corruption, does the DC drop by a certain amount per piece of evidence presented?

I'm running this tomorrow and going to go with a +4 bonus per piece. If they gather everything, it should be a gimmie.

When I ran it, I gave everyone a +2 bonus per piece.

Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy
2 people marked this as a favorite.

It should be a +4 bonus. This detail got lost in development, and is on my todo list to get edited back into the PDF.
Lantern Lodge

Thank you for clarification, Mark. Appreciated.

What terrain type is Temple? Forest, Urban, other?
Liberty's Edge

Demi-plane? just ran this and dont think any terrain types fit. It is another plane.

Is there a reason, beyond what looks like an error, that some encounter areas have CR differences in the main entry and the subtier entries that do not match?

CR Issue?:

A5. Kitchen (CR 1 or CR 4)
Subtier 1–2 (CR 3)
Subtier 4–5 (CR 6)

A13. Garden (CR 3 or CR 6)
Subtier 1–2 (CR 2)
Subtier 4–5 (CR 6)

Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy

Because sometimes we change how hard things are in development and the changes don't get implemented everywhere and then slip through editing. Luckily, I have a small adjustment I need to make to one of the encounters in this document anyway, and can adjust these when I do that. It should be sometime next week after PaizoCon's over that I have a chance to get those implemented.

I am wounded to see my first less-than-five-star review. Wounded, I say!

Seriously, though, I'm very pleased to see this adventure received so well!

Faction Mission Question:
Can I assume the Brass Scales weigh more than 5 lbs? Or do you want a simple Mage Hand to be able to get them?
Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy

Spoiler:
They can weigh less than 5 lbs. if a player comes up with the creative solution of using magic to retrieve them instead of Escape Artist. Given that the party has to survive a pretty tough battle to get access to them in the first place, I think that allowing this sort of use of a class ability in place of a skill check is fine.

This scenario sounds interesting. I'm not going to read the spoilers, but I will be participating in this module here soon. It's funny because this involves exploring an Aasimar temple (as it said in the description), and Albireo Renos, my Aasimar Cleric, should feel right at home lol. And just to clarify, at Genghis Con earlier this year, I won a boon sheet that allowed me to create an Aasimar ^^. Either way, Albireo should be just fine. It'll definately be interesting. Can't wait! =)

-Patrick.

I'm having some trouble with the big picture.

Spoiler:
The people in the tapestry - how did they get here? The stated reason seems to be that they wandered here from other sites within the tapestry. So Hao Jin put things in her tapestry that contained living people? That sounds - capital E - Evil.

And Hao Jin disappeared 300 years ago? Wouldn't the tapestry be crawling with multiple generations of people at this point? Not the temple itself - i see how the population would stay in control there - put the countryside should be thick with people at this point.

Has anyone come up with descriptions on how the other folks got there? That seems like the first thing players would ask.

Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy
1 person marked this as a favorite.
DMFTodd wrote:

I'm having some trouble with the big picture.

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
Hao Jin rarely intended to move people unwillingly into her realm, at least not when she wasn't collecting creatures specifically. In this case, Dakang was rooting around in the dirt in a battlefield she collected; the inhabitants in the Wonders in the Weave series were accidentally collected when the cave network they lived in was brought along with an old ruin adjacent to it; the inhabitants of Round Mountain were brought along when she pulled a whole sphere of earth from the Darklands into the tapestry to seal off invasion tunnels from below and save a nation under attack. Where the specific folks who appear in this adventure came from isn't defined, but when you're collecting whole ruined cities, ancient temples, and geographical wonders from across the world, there are likely to be a l few people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And whether or not this fact would be considered evil, Hao Jin was certainly not good-aligned. She was, after all, a devout follower of Abadar.

One more question:

Spoiler:
Is Dakang supposed to have an unholy symbol hanging on his neck (which the players fond of doing so will try to sunder) or does he need one at all to channel and cast spells?.
Grand Lodge

I've seen this run twice, and both times the players have been confused for the reasons DMFTodd mentioned.

Spoiler:
One gets the impression that the world of the tapestry should be deserted save for a few other explorers. Being greeted at the door of the temple and finding that it was in use was confusing. My table assumed it was some sort of time shift, while another table thought it to be phantasms or some other type of sinister illusion. In both cases the adventure slowed to a crawl because the players were afraid to trust anyone.
Grand Lodge
Zathow wrote:

One more question:

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
Since he wears it painted on his face, I say no.
Grand Lodge

It wont let me leave a review but this is a fantastic PFS module. Highly recommended.

I know this is four years late but I have to say in response to Radiostorm:

I played through this module at SCARAB many years ago and had a blast, and as you mentioned, we did slow to somewhat of a crawl! The GM role played the whole scenario perfectly though. Looking back, because of the expectation of finding nothing, our characters where very wary. This lead to hilarity and unspeakable dread. It reminded me of a mix of Scooby-Doo, Benny Hill and The Ring. Which may not sounds great to some, but believe me, we could not stop laughing at the absurdity that was fear the entire scenario!

I mean come on, when has the PFS ever sent Pathfinders to a safe "abandoned" local? :-)
Grand Lodge

Pg. 8 - Suicide compulsion haunts

Both of these haunts describe the weapon used as a jagged length of wood. Should this be considered an improvised weapon? This won't matter on the coup de grace attempt, but when attacking someone trying to prevent the suicide attempt, an attack roll would be made.
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