A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 3–7.
For centuries the city of Bloodcove has controlled access to the invaluable Vanji River, and for nearly as long, the Aspis Consortium has controlled Bloodcove. If the Pathfinder Society is to move the equipment and personnel it needs into the Mwangi Expanse, it needs a reliable means of smuggling resources through this unforgiving settlement operated by its enemies. It’s up to the PCs to establish a backdoor through Bloodcove—all without being caught by Aspis agents.
Content in “By Way of Bloodcove” also contributes directly to the ongoing storyline of the Exchange faction.
Written by Justin Juan.
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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I played this scenario today with a party of five. Unless my memory is playing tricks on me, we had a level 6 rageprophet, a level 4 warpriest, a level 5 bloodrager, a level 4 swashbuckler and a level 3 mesmerist (me). As a result, we played on the lower tier. The start was a bit slow, but that was mostly in-character discussion of how we wanted to keep a low profile and due to us getting stuck on a puzzle as we struggled with the cypher.
After that small hiccup, we were placed in what can best be described as a sandbox-situation with a couple of assignments we had to take care of. Let me be honest and say that there's indeed a lot of dice-rolling to be done. However it's worth noting that it's not a bad thing as you can be extremely creative for most portions of the scenario. I don't think I've ever seen so many different skills be relevant in some way, though diplomacy seems to be the most useful out of the bunch.
The tasks themselves were fun, and the fights were challenging. Granted, one of the fights ended up being a cakewalk for us as we quickly took care of the biggest threat, making the rest flee. From what I've been told though, she can nevertheless be a rather annoying individual to deal with. That said, she is not nearly as scary as the last encounter. A low tier group that isn't tactically savvy risks getting completely killed. Seriously, that individual and his unorthodox companion are really not to be underestimated. Consider that to be a warning, if you will.
Overall I really enjoyed the scenario and appreciated every single aspect of it. There's a lot of role-playing and sneaking, with some puzzle-solving and fighting on the sides. I recommend this scenario to those players that prefer role-playing and talking over fighting. If you just want to fight, you'd best stay away from this scenario.
I had the fortune of playing this scenario with my local venture captain as GM. At the onset of the scenario the players are given a long list of goals to try to accomplish while on their own in Bloodcove. How to go about completing these goals is up to them. Our table relished our deception of the Aspis and our subtle sabotage.
There are two reasons why I did not give this scenario 5 stars. The skill checks did not always seem to match what we where doing. Making intimidate or disguise checks to pretend to be adventures doesn't always make sense. Perhaps the DM could have more leeway in determining what type of skill check should be required with set DCs based on how plausible the deception is. The DCs could be based on the bluff DC chart. I.E. If the PCs are attempting something far-fetched it would have a DC 10 higher then something pretty believable. The other reason for not getting that last star was the end fight. I LOVE difficult fights. But I can see fairly common situations where there will be PC deaths before they can react, with no real recourse.
A sandbox style scenario married to the season six storyline. However its scenario-specific mechanics make it more of a successor to the 4th season The Disappeared and 5th season's Library of the Lion.
There's a burden on the GM for this scenario because of those mechanics: one must communicate how the mechanics work to the players, as letting them divine them through trial and error will ultimately result in tears. Having played it once and ran it once I'd recommend simply taking some out-of-character time to simply recite how they work, as awkward as that is. When I ran it, I forgot to tell the players about an allowance the skilled could take to compensate for the unskilled until after the first round of skill checks already started a vicious cycle of escalating alarms. (See the previous review to see what impact that had, from a player's perspective). When I played it, our GM simply never told us the mechanics at all, and we promptly ran ourselves out of town about 2 hours into the session, missing most of the scenario. (not to mention gold and prestige..)
All that being said, however, I do enjoy seeing skills being enforced as relevant in PFS, and I do like these Library of the Lion-esque adventure formats. The GM has a lot of leeway to improvise roleplaying encounters in this scenario too, more than normal for PFS, so it's fun to express creativity on the fly with the sandbox format.
Cons:
Probably will feel dated in future seasons
GM needs to really be prepared
Scenario-specific rules mechanics can trip up the entire game
Pros:
For the GM- Opportunities for improv roleplay are golden.
For the Player- Ever run afoul of the Aspis Consortium and have been burning for revenge ever since? Here's your chance to formulate as evil a plan as you can to stick it to them!
Context: Played at a local game store with a semi-regular group (ninja 3, paladin 4, kineticist 3, paladin 3, ranger 5, alchemist 7, oracle 5)
Note, it has been brought to my attention that I am short two character levels in my report though I don't remember exactly who they belonged to. Our APL was 4.5 which rounded to 5 and pushed us into high tier.
This scenario has a fairly straightforward setup in that you are sent to infiltrate the Aspis controlled city of Bloodcove to both sabotage their operations and set up a smuggling route for the Society. This quickly falls apart however once you realize that group stealth is basically impossible and failing it throws you into a hopeless boss fight for which a party of mostly level 3 to 5 players will be woefully unprepared for.
Spoiler:
Our group immediately ran into problems in that “infiltrate” basically translates to make a bunch of skill checks (mostly stealth, disguise and diplomacy) to avoid being found out. Want to walk down the street? Skill check from the whole party. Want to duck into an alley to talk to the shady merchant guy? Skill check from the whole party. Want to pick your nose? Skill check to not do it in a Pathfinder-y way.
This is in itself not a huge problem until you realize that every check has a DC in the mid 20’s and the entire group has to do them constantly with skills they are probably not trained in. To compound matters farther, every failure increases the DC of all later checks making remaining stealthy an increasingly impossible task. Once you stack up enough alarm points from failures the Aspis find you and force you to flee the city into one of the most unfair battles I’ve ever seen in PFS.
The setup is that you are supposed to flee across a river over a narrow bridge being held by a 9th level wizard, a Numerian robot/construct, and an orc fighter. In our game the wizard won initiative by a wide margin (30ish against the party’s high of 15) and opened with a Fireball. I say again, a 9th level wizard opened with a 9d6 Fireball against a 3rd level party all still stuck in the “PC’s start here” box, it was not pretty. This obviously put us immediately into triage mode trying to save people and get defenses up at which point the wizard hit us with a Stinking Cloud that nauseated most the people still standing after the Fireball and basically ended the fight. The construct and fighter were basically just mop-up on an already crippled party. Among the wizard's other spells were standard defenses like Mage Armor and Shield, but also numerous Resist Energy spells and possibly most egregious, multiple castings of Stoneskin giving him effectively 200+ HP. These are all, of course, pre-cast before the fight so he can get straight to killing PC's. I fully expect these tactics in a high level 7-11 game, but not in a 3-7 adjusted down for lower levels.
This is hands down the most unfair, poorly balanced scenario I have ever played in PFS and I say this having gone through a lot of infamous meat-grinder scenarios like Trial by Machine and Silver Mount Collection.
If you must play this, I recommend doing so with as few people as possible and ensure literally everyone is a stealth and social skill monkey, fighters, healers and even spell casters really have no place here and will only get in the way.
Super solid scenario
Christopher Wasko
(RPG Superstar 2015 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16)
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Context: GMed at a Con, high-tier, group of 7 PCs (sorcerer 3, swashbuckler 6, inquisitor 7, brawler 6, oracle 6, sorcerer 5, samurai 7).
Perfect amount of sandbox (like its predecessor in Season 2), balanced encounters, rich opportunity for roleplaying, engaging puzzle. Overall A+ scenario.
Spoiler:
My one issue was that the initial adventure briefing didn't really provide the PCs with all the info they needed to know where they needed to go (but that's easily fixed with appropriate skill checks) and that decoding the cypher can bring the game to a halt if the PCs get stuck.
Quick question and excuse my ignorance, but is there some rule or something about only certain star level GMs or venture-staff able to run new games for a certain period of time? Or can anyone run this for PFS once it goes on sale?
Looking forward to running this! But I have a question about a new item in it...
Nifty New Item:
Hematite Sphere Ioun Stone (flawed)
Is it available for purchase in PFS (assuming your PC has sufficient Fame and GP) without the chronicle sheet? (Obviously, it can be bought off the chronicle sheet.) Is there any other write-up for this item?
Some other questions about it...
Cost & Type:
Most Ioun stones come in regular, flawed, and cracked. This one only lists flawed. Are regular or cracked versions available, and if so how much are they & what are their properties?
Mechanics:
When slotted into a Wayfinder, it points toward the nearest other Hematite Sphere. Will it detect a Hematite Sphere if the other one isn't slotted, or do both have be in wayfinders for the location effect to work?
Looking forward to running this! But I have a question about a new item in it...
** spoiler omitted **
Is it available for purchase in PFS (assuming your PC has sufficient Fame and GP) without the chronicle sheet? (Obviously, it can be bought off the chronicle sheet.) Is there any other write-up for this item?
Some other questions about it...
** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **
Thanks!
In Response:
This ioun stone only appears in its flawed form thus far, though I strongly suspect we'll revisit it and introduce cracked and standard versions of it in a future publication. The version on the Chronicle sheet is available for purchase, and I'm sure clever players might come up with uses for it. A sloted version does have resonance, despite this being an atypical quality, and it points to the nearest such stone whether that stone is slotted or not.
Running this on play by post now... really loving it. Strangely, we're doing Scions of the Sky Key Part 1: On the Trail of Sharrowsmith next with the same group - and this seems to directly lead into that! So cool having the connecting scenario, even if it is just a thread about needing to find Sharrowsmith (no spoiler, it's in the title!).
So far, it's a complex adventure but I'm really enjoying the subterfuge aspect. I'll let you know more when I finish it and review it. ;-)
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