Pathfinder Society Scenario #6–02: The Silver Mount Collection (PFRPG) PDF

I enjoyed running this mod, and I feel like my players were challenged but not overwhelmed. I did tell my three player table to bring the barbarian pre-gen with them so they would have someone with enough damage power to reliably punch through hardness, and I think that helped them somewhat.

A potential concern is that it is easy to lose the second prestige point if the PCs don't find out all the relevant information before they go into the last battle. I think that makes for an interesting challenge - you can't just go in and beat the bad guy with as much damage as you can, as quickly as possible. However, if you are the sort of person who expects to get 2PP every adventure then you may feel that this one was taken away from you a little too easily.

Disclosure: I played this at low tier, with a level 3 fighter/level 3 inquisitor/level 7 fighter/level 3 monk/level 4 pregen gunslinger.

I honestly don't know if there is much that I can say that is good about this module. In fact, there isn't a thing I can venture forth that is "good".

I don't know if it's the author, the editor, the yearly story arc, the GM, or any combination of the above, but this mod caused me to skip the next scenario slot at my recent convention. It was that terrible.

If you aren't a level 5 playing down (with adamantine and AOE effects and the ability to climb a sheer surface), don't bother this adventure. The rewards are lackluster, you are put at a severe disadvantage in every situation, you are utterly railroaded in your approach, and the end result is, most likely, you getting a permanent negative mark on your character.

I'm glad to see that John Compton mentioned in another thread he was going to look into this scenario after Gen Con. If this is an indicator of how season 6 will be heading, I'll come back in a year when the content is more appealing, the mods better written, and the editors pay attention to encounter design.

I played this scneario high tier as a LvL5 Ranger, along with a few sixes and sevens, including Ascalaphus and Damanta (earlier reviews).

Adventure (3): Something's terribly wrong in the Blakros Museum. Sounds familiar? Think again. The faction mission is not extremely interesting, but the result was somewhat funny :).

Combat (4): I was glad I had just bought an adamantine earthbreaker and selected Constructs as my second favored enemy (this was mostly done from character background, but still it was a happy coincidence). This should not be a spoiler anymore by now, I believe.
The two-handed frontline had a few glorious moments, during which we showed the world no-one needs a shield to be able to tank.
The final combat was a total mess for us. GM's should be very careful and read into the abilities (and racial traits!) of special monsters, especially when these are less common. Because of this, the battle was incredibly hard and in the end we almost had to set fire to the building to defeat the encounter.

Background/RP (3): The adventure is set at the start of a struggle between the Pathfinder Society and the (until now) unknown Technic League. The background of the museum and all you can discover, is great. The encounter in the second room is great and should give many clues. The problem about these, is that their importance are easily missed either by the GM and/or by the players.
It's also a shame that, weeks later, I still don't understand the link between some of the encounters and their relation to the BBEG. Maybe the scenario explains this for the GM, but it was not explained to us players.

Skills (1): There are enough opportunities to use your knowledges... Provided you have the Technologist feat. Forget your ranks in Knowledge skills otherwise. In my opinion, it is terrible design to ask players to buy a feat to be able to succeed at the core theme of a whole season. I believe GMs should be allowed to either ignore the Technologist feat and to simply increase the difficulty of the Knowledge checks by 5 (or in some cases even 10?). This should still give enough difficulty, instead of stating a party cannot discover what the story in the background is, or what the weaknesses of an enemy are all about if they refuse to pay a feat tax (which it is).

My Experience

I played this at a convention, low tier with a table of only 4. Three characters were level 6 and one was level 3. Level 6s were a paladin, a Lore Warden fighter, and a Zen Archer; Level 3 was a gunslinger. The following week I ran it at low tier for a table of six, including a druid, barbarian, rogue, bard/oracle, and two monks.

The Good

Challenging. The quote in the review title came from the level 5 druid player when I GMed it. Had a couple of players go down mid-fight, and have to get recovered. There were LOTS of easter eggs in the scenario - it’s possible to go through the whole thing and not find any of the secrets if you’re not looking. This can make the scenario even harder, as well as removing a lot of the flavour, which means that murderhobo-types don’t get the whole story. Say what you will about play styles differing, but in my book, that’s a good thing.

The Bad

Lots of combats that take a lot of time. If the gearsmen use their auto-repair ability, and especially if the party doesn’t have adamantine weapons, the combats can drag and eat up a lot of time. When I GMed it, my players skipped a lot of the ground floor, and we still went long because it took them an hour and a half to drop the first encounter. RP runs the danger of getting overlooked as a result.

Conclusions

For GMs: Read the thread in the GM Discussion Board, and use it to your advantage. In the absence of a final, firm and clear decision about the role of the Technologist Feat in PFS, make a decision and stick with it. Recognize that your decision about this - combined with players who barrel through the museum without really paying attention to what goes on - might make it nigh-impossible for the players to achieve the secondary objective. My GM on my play through purposely mispronounced tech words (It’s those ruBUTs that are the problem!) and it added some levity while re-emphasizing that tech was something most people don’t know about.

For Players: Savour it. Sure, you may not like ray-guns in your adventure, but it’s an interesting break from the norm. The scenario also hinges significantly on characters actually figuring out what is going on, rather than just bull-rushing through to the last encounter.

Overall Feegle Rating: Challenging, lengthy, but overall satisfying with a chance of interesting boons..

With pathfinder continuing to move into the "hobo rush" mentality and players becoming dps monsters this scenario yet again proves to me how quickly and badly things can go wrong. For once the DC's were actually on a level that made the scenario challenging for the players. The AC and hardness of the monsters in the scenario made sure that the combat was not over in one to two rounds, (pop out the cure light wounds wand for one to two charges and move on), and was actually a challenge for the PC's. There are ways to exploit the weaknesses of the monsters in the scenario if the PC's actually pay attention to the NPC at the beginning, should they take the time to talk to him, or if they have also been through 6-01. This scenario is not of rails and allows the PC's to move around as they wish, meaning they can bypass a lot of the scenario and go straight to the end, meaning they either need to circle back or, take the hit in gold. Finally I am enjoying scenarios where if the PC's overkill everything they can fail the mission. Ya you were supposed to save them... This scenario was very well written, had a excellent story and the boons fit perfectly according to the PC's actions, kudos to the author.