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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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More like this, please

5/5 —

This is almost a perfect scenario; it has exploration, role-playing, problem solving, and a bit of action that will test any party make-up. I dislike scenarios that are nothing but combat and do nothing to reward non-combatant PC, or rather non-combat oriented characters. The Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment scratches both itches.

The exploration is fantastic. Instead of a traditional crawl through a deserted complex, this one lives and has its own rhythms. The interaction between players and inhabitants was a lot of fun; I had the players pantomime what they wanted, and used basic first day foreign language class exercises with them.

Spoiler:
No one at my table spoke Tian. They also did not ask about the temple before going into the tapestry. Since one of the tasks is to catalog a library, I asked what languages people spoke. When no one said Tian, I suggested they invest in a few comprehend language scrolls. This proved to be a bit worse than I expected. The lack of languages spoken correlated to a severe lack of knowledge skills.

The mystery aspect is a slow burn of discovery, very well done. This scenario drills into the players why it is a good idea to have a few ranks in a knowledge skill. You can succeed in this scenario with out a lot of knowledge skills, but the mystery is that much harder to unravel.

If I had one minor complaint, it would be the lack of items that could help the party succeed. Yes they can come and go as they please, but a few items to help overcome the language barrier or with the combats within the temple would be nice.

Different and entertaining

5/5 —

I ran this tonight and it was great fun. Lots of roleplaying potential in a quite interesting setting.

Definitely NOT one for the hack N slash players.

At 4 hours I did find it a little tight on time.

The final encounter is very, very dangerous (I ran it at L1-2 where it is likely more dangerous than at L4-5). When I ran it the characters quickly decided it was time to cut and run and save themselves. Its almost worth the 5 stars just to see PCs running for their lives :-).

Spoiler:

At level 1-2 the defences of the Demon are just insane. The characters hadn't been able to enlist the aid of the bodyguards and, at that level, had no way of getting much damage past the DR. The demon just spider climbed onto the walls and did mass inflict light wounds.

There is one definite flaw in the module in that the PCs had already accomplished almost all their goals at that point. The final encounter was almost optional.

Spoiler:

There is a sidebar addressing what to do if the PCs just try and leave but its hard to apply that when the PCs are only a few rounds from being able to flee home. When things went south in the combat they were able to flee and had little reason not to since they'd accomplished their primary mission at that point. They went after the Big Bad immediately after going into the crypt so it wasn't as if he had much opportunity to attack them first once they were convinced that there was a problem

Given the nearly sandbox nature of the adventure I suspect that different groups will approach this (especially the finale) in a great many different ways, some a lot more dangerous than others.

Strictly speaking, the way that my characters handled things at the end they should have had both the final encounter and the optional encounter together. But that would almost certainly have been a TPK so I took advantage of the fact that I didn't have time for the optional encounter :-)

Spoiler:

They fought their way past the bodyguards and burst into the BBEGs bedroom. That gave him more than enough time to summon his dretches. I decided that he failed his summons check.

One of the absolute best!

5/5 —

This scenario is packed with awesome roleplay and a story that will chill players to the bone.

The atmosphere and suspense is more tangible than in any scenario I have previously run or played. Players will not know what to expect but they will know from the first minutes of play that they are in for a challenge unlyke anything the PFS has presented before.

Kudos to Ron Lundeen and Mark Moreland for an original and well presented story!

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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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