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Pathfinder Society Scenario #5–01: The Glass River Rescue (PFRPG) PDF

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Pathfinder Society Scenario #5–01: The Glass River Rescue (PFRPG) PDF

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A Pathfinder Society Scenario for characters of 1st to 5th level (Tier 1–5).

A Pathfinder leading a diplomatic envoy from the dwarven holds of the Five Kings Mountains has gone missing, and the balance of power in a time of war hangs on her rescue. The Pathfinder Society's divinations indicate the agent was waylaid in the theocratic nation of Razmiran, when one of her escorted diplomats failed to pay a requested tithe. Now it falls to the party to enter Razmiran, locate the missing Pathfinder and the dwarven diplomats, and escape with their lives.

Written by Mike Shel.

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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PZOPSS0501E

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The return of an earlier NPC!

5/5 —

I loved that an NPC from an earlier scenario (even though you didn't get to actually meet him) is back! Make sure to ask the players at the table if they've played The Ghenett Manor Gauntlet as it will put the NPC into perspective for those that have.

I got to run it only once at GenCon with the author watching as we finished. Apparently we were one of the only tables to run it at sub-tier 4-5.

Prestige Point issue:
In order to get the second Prestige Point you have to record two successes from a very small list. At the high sub-tier one of the possible successes only comes from the optional encounter, so if you don't have time to run it because of the fun roleplay then they MUST go two-for-two on the other objectives in order to get the second Prestige Point. If they don't have someone good at Bluff one of them is very, very difficult to boot. Sub-tier 1-2 has one extra way to get their second success, so it seems that they are more likely to get the second PP than sub-tier 4-5!

Bottom line, in the future I hope the Developers avoid having a Prestige Point success condition tied to the optional encounter!

Overall, if your party likes to roleplay then this is a great scenario, and I can't wait to see how the party's decisions here will impact the metaplot in the future!

Easy but enjoyable

4/5 —

I ran this at subtier 1-2 with a group of 6 (two 1s, two 2s, two 3s), and though the group made quick work of pretty much every combat I thought it was a pretty solid scenario. A lot of the combat is split up by discussions with the NPCs (which was a little rough with my PCs, all of whom didn't have much interest in anything beyond the combats), but with a good group of roleplayers and a GM knowledgeable about Pathfinder lore they'd make for some good roleplaying experiences.

High adventure on the low river

4/5 —

So this adventure is the first with the new set up for faction missions. I must say I approve of the new system, yes it sucks that sometimes there is no side context but there is also no stupid things like, 'bring me some tea leaves'.

Our party. 2 - L1 Fighters, L2 - Conjurer, L2 - Gunslinger

No one in the party was of the correct faction to initiate the faction mission.

What happened:
As you might guess by the party make up we have no one good at bluffing. Also my Conjurer has an 8 charisma and Taldorian noble; for some unknown reason the party lets him talk. So whe we arrive in port we are asked to pay our dues to this man-god. My Conjurere flips a platnium to the enforcer. This was a bad idea as it appeared to give him we were richer than originally suspected.

So they decided to board our ship. So while putting the gang plank out I cast grease on it. Half of them fall down, YAY!! Gunslinger goes next and tosses a fire tanglebag. Fire + Grease = pretty. I go next and color spray the wolf and the last standing guy. So they are on fire and unconsious. Our fighter goes next and quickly kicks the gangplank into the water. Apparently the fire bag + water + grease = very pretty. We left the town with the water and docks on fire. This was not the first impression we were wanting to make.

We decide to play merchants when we arrive at the Inn. So being that my conjurer is a noble of Taldor he decides to play it up. He doesn't rent one room he rents the entire inn; for a week. Rolled a 19 on the bluff. I roll high enough on my sense motive to know that the sisters are odd but not get anything else. The party splits my character finds the hidden basement. I then gather the party and we go explore.

To protect us from people that might follow I grease the ladder coming down. We found what we could find. We sneak back out and then to my room. Out the window and to safety. So we thought. The sorcerer and her goons were on the roof. I color spray them goons go down and we let her escape due to not wanting to spill blood on holy ground.

So we did not complete the extra prestige point which I was okay with because it does not seem silly now.

Overall I like the adventure. I would recommend it a play.

The Immoral Conundrum...

4/5 —

Had the opportunity to run this for our local game store, our first Season 5 scenario, and I feel like things went relatively smoothly. There's a considerable amount of push-back concerning how faction missions are handled now; personally, faction missions have ranged from "enriching additions" to "pointless and tacked-on". This scenario felt a bit meatier than previous outings, and if that's the trade-off for ditching 8 faction missions and corresponding notes, I'm okay with that.

My Table:
We had a table of four: L2 Wizard, L3 Gunslinger, L3 Paladin, and L5 Paladin, all of which are experienced players. APL was right at 3, so they chose to go the more challenging route.

Progression:
I'm kind of a fan of the illusion of choice in this scenario... it did a lot to plant seeds of doubt in not only the NPCs but other players (nothing better than a little dissension to create drama and good RP opportunities). First encounter was handled expertly (accidentally ran the encounter without scale-down... didn't realize it until several pages later when the blurb appeared for scaling). The next combat gave them a little more of a challenge, but the scale-down made a big difference. Nailed the social encounter at the Inn. It took the table a bit longer than anticipated to find the secret entrance to the basement and the optional was skipped due to time. Final encounter was very much nerfed due to scale-down and the previous social encounter... BBEG seemed a bit weak, but a particular item on her person helped lengthen the encounter... to about 2 and a half rounds. Full clear, no deaths, job well done.

What the...:
So, during the dead of night, the party decides to explore. Lawful-stupid Paladin (LSP) splits the party in order to keep watch on the sisters. LSP knocks on their door and aces the perception to hear them whispering to one another. LSP assumes this means they're in trouble and kicks the door in. Queue three old women in nightgowns scared half to death of the 7-foot tall Aasimar in full-plate standing there. LSP uses the cover story that he's hungry (while eating an apple, mind you). They know he's lying. One sister makes an attempt to leave so she can warm him up some stew. LSP closes the door, locks it, and says "I want us to be alone." Two sisters do fine on their Sense Motive... one is entirely convinced that something terrible is going to befall her, so she grabs a knife off the mantle. Roll initiative. LSP holds action until someone threatens him. Sister comes at him Wendy-from-The-Shining-style with a knife, misses. Sister two throws a cup at him, misses. Sister three grabs a fire-stoker and takes a swing, misses. LSP cuts the knife-wielder down. Sister two cowers in the corner, pleading in her native language (that LSP does not know). Sister three attempts to do the same, but provokes AoO, which LSP takes (she *did* threaten him). LSP doesn't have the Spellcraft, Linguistics, Language, or Sense Motive necessary and legitimately believes she's casting a full-round spell. LSP kills her. ALL THE WHILE, the other three members of the party are in the stables, listening to the cacophony of screams getting louder, more panicked, crescendo, and fade to silence... and they did nothing, because, you know, LSP can't be reasoned with.

Overall, I enjoyed running it. Quite a bit of substance, some of which will be completely ignored unless an Osirion player is at the table. RP elements were solid, though the combats seemed a little too diluted when scaled down to 4 players.

Fun RP friendly scenario

5/5 —

I ran 5 tables of this at GenCon and had a blast. Every table I ran of it had a great time. What I liked best was that there are plenty of opportunities for RP spread throughout the scenario. In fact, three separate areas have specific RP encounters set up that effect the ending and possibly the long term story arch for season 5. This gave me as a GM to bounce between two very colorful RP personalities and voices while making direct appeals to the players and thus encouraging their character personalities to emerge.

The combats were fairly straight forward and a bit on the easy side but I did not mind this at all. I’d encourage GMs to look carefully at the templates and magic items of the enemies. But again what I liked about the encounters is that there is RP involved with them. A creative RP GM can create a lot of dialogue during the combats to really invest the PCs in kicking their butts!

Great job Mike Shel and Paizo.

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Webstore Gninja Minion

Announced for GenCon 2013!

Sounds like a great start for season 5 :D
Shadow Lodge
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Its nice to finally know what it is that I'm running at GenCon... ;D
Dark Archive
Eric Clingenpeel wrote:
Its nice to finally know what it is that I'm running at GenCon... ;D

Same here; and it's written by Mike Shel. GenCon keeps looking better and better.

Sovereign Court
Eric Clingenpeel wrote:
Its nice to finally know what it is that I'm running at GenCon... ;D

Same. Just hoping I have more than 12 hours to download, print, and prep it...

Silver Crusade

We're going back to the wilderness! It's like going back to Season 0 adventures all over again! But not quite. Cause they are in Pathfinder RPG now. :D

I'll be running this at GenCon as well. I'm getting super excited about Season 5!
Liberty's Edge

It is getting close to release, when are we going to see the final cover art updated on the website?
Contributor

For those running this scenario at GenCon:

With your permission I'll be sitting in on several sessions and would be happy to answer questions for you, especially if you don't get lots of time for prep. Feel free to private message me here if you don't mind me sitting in to watch the action.
Shadow Lodge RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
Mike Shel wrote:

For those running this scenario at GenCon:

With your permission I'll be sitting in on several sessions and would be happy to answer questions for you, especially if you don't get lots of time for prep. Feel free to private message me here if you don't mind me sitting in to watch the action.

Thanks for being available Mike! I'll let you know if I have any questions once I get it in my downloads. :)

Liberty's Edge
Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Mike, Hope to see you sitting at my table again this year!

That said... what are the chances we will see this (and the other scenarios we are wiaitng on) given to the GenCon GMs today?

Because of odd situation I am going through right now, if I don't get it today it will be very difficult for me to be able to prep this before Gen Con.
Liberty's Edge

I got 5 sessions of this to run at GenCon - cant wait to bring the awesome!

Feel free to sit in on my games and see how its done! ;-)
Paizo Employee Developer

It's my first day back after Gen Con, and I've caught up on reading reviews. I appreciate the feedback—especially for it being predominantly positive.

Mildly spoiler response to Thamius' concern:

Thanks for pointing out the difficulty of tying in the optional encounter and making the full Prestige award. I'll be certain to keep an eye out for that in the future.
Sczarni

Small point, but I was reviewing this scenario to get an idea what secondary success conditions would look like (running #13 tomorrow). I really like the addition of boons to the chronicle for faction goal advancement.

The small point I really wanted to make was that the chronicle lists gear rewards for all subtiers and subtler 8-9. I'm sure this was a layout/cut paste over sight as the scenario is level 1-5.

Just thought I would point it out in case no one has said anything yet.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Played it today.

Kind of meh...in the end it seemed just like any other have this one skill or fail scenario.

On the plus side, I did enjoy the story. Pretty nicely written, thanks.

minor spoiler:
One player was a meta and power gamer who was socially challenged (repeatedly interrupted and used a lot of cursing) and another player who decided that breaking (destroyed their bedroom door, used intimidate) into the peaceful npc's bedroom was a good act.
Since the rest of the party at Tier 1-2 decided 1) not to slaughter everyone and 2) could not beat a +37 sense motive with bluff we failed the mission. Also low tier has limited options in dealing with an invisible boss.

Going to see if it runs a bit different, maybe it was our GM and group.
Sovereign Court
Rerednaw wrote:
** spoiler omitted **

I do apologize for my part in not keeping people on track and shutting them up so others could play. I also apologize for mis-speaking.

Spoiler:
It was a 27 Sense Motive which I rolled (Nat 19 plus skill bonus), but a 37 like I said at the end. I even went back just now to check the roll. It was rolled properly, and the bluff check was still did not beat it, and thus not altering what happened. Also, I will let you know that the final fight would have happened regardless of that check, just been a bit easier. That said...
You lot absolutely trounced the final fight. I was left in the dust trying to catch up. Not much I could have done different with those tactics.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path Subscriber

Any flip maps or map packs required for this scenario?

or are the maps easy to create on a blank map?
Grand Lodge

Map Pack: Waterfront and Flip-mat Country Inn. They are pretty complex.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Sior wrote:
Rerednaw wrote:
** spoiler omitted **
I do apologize for my part in not keeping people on track and shutting them up so others could play. I also apologize for mis-speaking. ** spoiler omitted **You lot absolutely trounced the final fight. I was left in the dust trying to catch up. Not much I could have done different with those tactics.

@Sior

Did we play the same session? As I recall, we basically popped cover and fled. :) I don't consider fleeing and module failure a big success. On the other hand nobody died which was a nice plus.

I thought your GM style was fine, BTW. That other stuff wasn't your fault.

I still have a fundamental issue with "one skill check or fail" but that's just how it's written is all. I prefer something along the lines of make at least 3 out of 4 or similar. That way when the dice pulls a Han Solo Stealth/Bluff check we can make it up. Also if it is a round of such rolls it encourages more player engagement out of combat something PFS still has some difficulty with. I guess more like the way skill challenges are done in 4th DND. :)
Silver Crusade

Played this about a month ago. 2nd level greatsword paladin > river drake, apparently.

Sadly the local PFS group has a few people who basically play murderhobos and made a hash out of the whole inn infiltration (you'd think it would be the paladin screwing up the bluffing, but nope, it was the rogues), but we managed to rescue the prisoners and destroyed the final encounter; I wasted smite because the cleric (I guess not a cleric from the discussion? She died too quickly to say) got completely gibbed before I could get a second turn.
2 people marked this as a favorite.

Spoiler:

This is an actual exchange from tonight's running of this scenario.

"So what's her AC? I got a 19?"
"She's a grandma...so her AC is 9 - you hit her for nearly all her HP, and she screams and begs for mercy."
"Her AC is 9?"
"She's a grandma."

Luckily the party got the hint that while the sisters MAY be evil, hell, they may be involved in some awful things, they're NOT combatants -- I only had to explain to them one time that they were bordering on evil actions when it came to these three women.

Night Hag, witch, demons, ghosts, they were none of those things. But two members of the party assumed they were.

The Urban Ranger Tiefling with HUMAN as his Preferred Enemy - took this to mean he hates humans and so therefore felt NOTHING about beating on a defenseless elderly woman. Attempted to justify an evil act by saying 'But my character HATES humans.'

So? She's a grandma. That was my only response.

Maybe in future -- we don't put something like 'If someone from this land treats you with kindness, it's cause for suspicion.'in our scenarios, then have defenseless elderly women be kind to the PCs. Or, we actually MAKE THE EVIL WOMEN EVIL. Ratting people out to the authorities is not 'punch the grandma in the face' level of evil needing thwarting. But if you plant that seed of 'If they're kind, be suspicious' with Murder Hobos -- bear in mind they will IMMEDIATELY punch a grandma.

Liberty's Edge
2 people marked this as a favorite.
Quote:
The Urban Ranger Tiefling with HUMAN as his Preferred Enemy - took this to mean he hates humans....

Sigh.... "trained to fight against" is not the same as "hates", but it's a pity folks don't realize that.

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
rknop wrote:
Quote:
The Urban Ranger Tiefling with HUMAN as his Preferred Enemy - took this to mean he hates humans....
Sigh.... "trained to fight against" is not the same as "hates", but it's a pity folks don't realize that.

Unfortunately, the mechanics of the class can be argued to favor the player's interpretation. When the only way you can take your own race as a Favored Enemy is be being of an evil alignment, it rather implies an antagonistic relationship with said Favored Enemy...

Sovereign Court
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Irnk, Dead-Eye's Prodigal wrote:
When the only way you can take your own race as a Favored Enemy is be being of an evil alignment, it rather implies an antagonistic relationship with said Favored Enemy...

[citation needed]

Ranger class wrote:

Favored Enemy (Ex): At 1st level, a ranger selects a creature type from the ranger favored enemies table. He gains a +2 bonus on Bluff, Knowledge, Perception, Sense Motive, and Survival checks against creatures of his selected type. Likewise, he gets a +2 bonus on weapon attack and damage rolls against them. A ranger may make Knowledge skill checks untrained when attempting to identify these creatures.

At 5th level and every five levels thereafter (10th, 15th, and 20th level), the ranger may select an additional favored enemy. In addition, at each such interval, the bonus against any one favored enemy (including the one just selected, if so desired) increases by +2.

If the ranger chooses humanoids or outsiders as a favored enemy, he must also choose an associated subtype, as indicated on the table below. (Note that there are other types of humanoid to choose from—those called out specifically on the table below are merely the most common.) If a specific creature falls into more than one category of favored enemy, the ranger's bonuses do not stack; he simply uses whichever bonus is higher.
Shadow Lodge

It's kind of a throw back. In 2E, a Ranger had to attack their favored enemy to the exclusion of others unless it was completely impractical. In 3.0, you had t be evil to select your own race as a Favored Enemy unless they where normally evil (like Drow), (I think it was something like that). In 3.5 that mostly went away and a bit more social effects where added in. It still retains the Favored Enemy rather than something like Favored Target/Subject.
Grand Lodge

This question was put up on Facebook's PFS page. Putting it here to see if anyone can help this person out.

"I'm looking the old Pathfinder Society module, Glass River Rescue, and I've noticed Passad, Metella, and Amauhak don't have stat blocks. Do those stat blocks exist elsewhere?"
Grand Lodge

I see that 5-21 has stats for Passad and Metella as experts (merchants). Still nothing on Amauhak so far.
Paizo Employee Developer

There are not stat blocks for any of these three NPCs at this time. It's possible that a future scenario might provide them full stat blocks.
Grand Lodge
John Compton wrote:
There are not stat blocks for any of these three NPCs at this time. It's possible that a future scenario might provide them full stat blocks.

Okay. So nothing in 5-01. This is how it reads right now in the 5-21 adventure:

TEMEL PASSAD
LN male human expert/prophet of Kalistrade

METELLA RAUGER
LG female dwarf expert/fighter

Tier 1-2
TEMEL PASSAD OR METELLA RAUGER CR 1
Shopkeep (Pathfinder RPG Gamemastery Guide 284)
hp 13

Tier 4-5
TEMEL PASSAD OR METELLA RAUGER CR 5
Traveling merchant (Pathfinder RPG Gamemastery Guide 285)
hp 31
Paizo Employee Developer

Yep, noted. The NPC Codex reference is very useful for approximating their statistics in that adventure, but that sample expert does not reflect their exact class mixes. Likewise, the differences over the subtiers (important for the adventure) make the substitution a little less satisfying in the long run. I would want to provide a definitive character level before saying that something is the canonical stat block for one or the other. Any one of them is probably in the level 5-8 range.

Might I ask why it is important to have their exact stats? Is there a compulsion or charm spell involved?
Grand Lodge
John Compton wrote:

Yep, noted. The NPC Codex reference is very useful for approximating their statistics in that adventure, but that sample expert does not reflect their exact class mixes. Likewise, the differences over the subtiers (important for the adventure) make the substitution a little less satisfying in the long run. I would want to provide a definitive character level before saying that something is the canonical stat block for one or the other. Any one of them is probably in the level 5-8 range.

Might I ask why it is important to have their exact stats? Is there a compulsion or charm spell involved?

Apparently it makes it easier to run. I've never ran the adventure myself, but it's been brought up a few times in the reviews, and someone on FB was in need of it for their game. Apparently a number of people required it for one reason or another.

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