A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 5–9.
A simple retrieval mission takes an unexpected turn when the Pathfinder Society learns a valuable treasure was under its nose—within the curious demiplane connected to the Hao Jin Tapestry. The descendants of the original owners have changed in the centuries since their sequestration, though, and initial attempts to parley have ended in failure. Can the PCs discover what became of this lost people and secure the relic they guard?
Content in “Tapestry’s Toil” contributes directly to the Year of the Sky Key metaplot as well as the ongoing storyline of the Grand Lodge faction.
Written by Steven Helt.
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.
Product Availability
Fulfilled immediately.
Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at
store@paizo.com.
So I ran this at tier 6-7, and overall I think it ran fairly well. I quite enjoyed the backstory for this one and I feel it translated pretty clearly to the players. The scenario has to get bonus points for including past metaplots such as the Hao Jin tapestry, with the new metaplot of the rival Aspis Consortium group as foils.
Definitely enjoyed the whole Duergar theme of this adventure, and overall it felt quite coherent even with an Eidolon , construct, and undead enemies sprinkled in for variety. The BBEG was especially fun, being able to let loose all of his class abilities and causing minor panic before being efficiently taken down.
The infiltration of the enemy stronghold felt a little cheap, but I would personally run something similar in the same way. When my party decided to free all the slaves they had forgotten to heal up post-boss fight and nearly died in the process.
My only criticism is a lack of puzzles in this one, it felt more like fight, fight, fight, and repeat. Aside from that I would definitely recommend this one for higher level players.
This scenario has a lot of really cool stuff going on. That said, it is entirely too long. There is no optional encounter, and the terrain is used to great effect, but are two complicated terrain encounters necessary? Furthermore, the time/distance between parts of the scenario should be clarified. This was not helped by the mechanic for traveling in the compound, which felt a bit like needlessly ticking off charges of CLW.
Finally, regarding individual combats
First:
I think this is a great RP encounter. Very happy with it
second:
This encounter uses terrain VERY well, but should be cut from the scenario for length reasons
third:
This encounter uses terrain VERY well again. Nothing bad to say about it.
fourth:
The forge room is tiny and uses a very standard cleric bad guy. Not necessarily a bad encounter, but wish the mooks were positioned better as guards to prevent the caster from being overrun initially.
fifth:
BBEG is missing invisibility purge, or any other way of dealing with it. It was a crippling deficiency that allowed one character to essentially solo it while others were forced to sit out when I ran it. He is very strong in tier 8-9, as well. His tactic if "losing" is entirely unacceptable in my opinion.
sixth:
Was this trap really necessary? The scenario is long enough...
Complicated mechanics don't necessarily make for a fun and 'short' scenario
I played this scenario two nights ago, and I’m sad to report that my party failed to defeat the final boss. It doesn’t really help that two of us were level 6 and had to play up. That, however, will not overly bias this review.
First things first: the length of the scenario. The whole idea is that a scenario is a short adventure that can be finished in around 4 to 5 hours. This scenario completely failed at that. It took us 6 hour to even reach the final boss, and that was with skipping some patrols as apparently detailed in the optional rules. I can’t even blame it on lots of roleplaying, it were just the encounters that dragged on and on, especially the second one. I’m pretty sure that a big part of why we failed were that we were all tired. Fleeing was one way of just ending it.
Next up for me to complain about, is the fact that I really missed a logical storyline. Why are those greyskins there in the first place? Why are we suddenly having that issue with the riverfolk? I don’t get it and I’m fairly convinced this is not the GM’s fault either. To me this scenario is a bunch of encounters tied together, just because certain mechanics or ideas seemed fun to the author. To me that’s not fun: in addition to challenging encounters, I need a storyline to immerse myself in.
So is it really all that bad? I’d say no, but role-play heavy characters aren’t the most optimal here for all but one encounter. In fact, the first encounter features a creature type I’d really love to see more of. Furthermore, the mechanics involved in some of the fights are really clever, but it’s just too much and too complex to completely fill a scenario with.
In the end I have to admit to myself that this is the season 6 scenario I liked the least. It has some nice elements, but also really lacks a consistent storyline that actually gets explained to the player, which is a real shame considering how vital this scenario is for the meta-plot.
GM'ed for a group of APL 7 playing up with the 4 player adjustment. The scenario is a delve back into a familiar location with some interesting interactions with familiar and new faces. The party composition really matters, as I've seen that most people easily bypass the first encounter, but my table given 2 chances ended up in a fight that could have gone badly. The second combat has the potential to be very nasty and some unclear monster issues at the high tier. The middle of the scenario is a set of mostly trivial exposition scenes. The final fight has very brutal tactics that could easily result in the permanent loss of a PC, if played to the extent of the BBEGs abilities. That said, he does have a lot of cool abilities that are not often seen to give the players a solid challenge.
Having just ran From Under Ice over the weekend, I can heartily recommend playing that before playing this one. Why? Read the spoiler below if you don't mind a very slight spoiler.
Kind of a spoiler:
I'm pretty sure this is a follow-on adventure that continues the events in From Under Ice. Of course, I'm just going by the summary here.
Absolutely cannot wait to play this - but I'll have to, since I've committed to playing it at GenCon.
Is this supposed to be available for general purchase before premiering at PaizoCon? I remember it was an issue last year with the PaizoCon premiers....
Hey, everyone! I'll be checking this thread for feedback and questions about the scenario. I talked to several who played or ran the game at PaizoCon and they all seemed pleased. Always wanna answer questions and learn, though.
I look forward to the day Paizo publishes me as "Steven T Helt" : )
Played this one last week -- party was:
6 Blaster Wizard
5 Greatsword fighter
5 Sneaky rogue
6 AC-tank Warpriest
7 Barbarian
Mostly, very fun.
Encountered a little frustration from some events that I'm sure were probably supposed to be a little frustrating anyway . . .
Spoiler for detailed reactions / review
Spoiler:
The first encounter was a ton of fun, but some really low diplomacy rolls meant the eidolon got beaten on quite badly. She survived, though, and gave one last chance for diplomacy . . . which also failed miserably. Ah, well, at least she got away after giving a little info about what had happened.
The ruined settlement had some good flavor, and after cleaning the mural we had a decent idea of what we were going to be facing -- or thought we did.
Then the second encounter just about killed us. We broke the illusion with the barbarian's idea to "fish" for the chest with a grapple arrow and rope, which a couple of decent will saves figured out that it wasn't really there . . . and that's when the excrement encountered the rotating atmospheric oscillator. That water orb is just crazy frustrating, and it felt like any time someone would get out they'd just get sucked right back in. If not for the warpriest's potion of fly, a couple of us would have been washed down the river. Nobody was ever in any real danger of dying from combat (and in fact the adds each went down in one hit) but there were some very close calls with drowning. Eventually got through that, though, and the GM let us camp on the way up the mountain -- the warpriest and wizard were both out of spells at that point.
The third encounter, however, was where the real frustration set in. Climbing those (expletive deleted) stairs just about killed the party. We split into a "left" and "right" group, with climbing rope, pitons, the whole works on both sides. Left side went with a slow-and-steady approach while the right side tried a faster approach. The right side each (Barbarian and Rogue) made their first climb checks . . . and then proceeded to fail the second, taking a good bit of damage. They then grew increasingly desperate to get up and join the party, leading to some bad decisions which combined with bad dice rolling to keep them on the ground. The party on the left took several rounds to get up to the top (discovered about halfway up, and then the shooting started) and would have been in trouble if not for the warpriest's crazy-high AC. Once they reached the top, though, it went much better -- getting four archers with one well-placed fireball is always a good time, and the constructs didn't prove to be much of a problem.
The trek through the mountain was . . . anticlimactic. The rogue hit every one of his scouting rolls, and the warpriest's navigation rolls were flawless.
On to the fourth encounter. For a time, we thought we were going to be able to diplomacize (is that even a word?) our way through, but it was not to be. No problems with the encounter itself, and both went down with little fuss.
Our fifth encounter (after another flawless navigation / scouting roll combo) was similarly simple. The boss got off his crystal-shards move, but never got another hit in. I heard a little bit about what might have happened if we hadn't taken him down as quickly as we did, and I'm certainly glad we didn't have to deal with that.
Overall, a great scenario. Everyone had fun, there was a good mix between combat and role playing (and role playing during combat) and the ending felt earned.
Played this last Sunday and had a lot of fun. Came a hairsbreadth away from dying. If a party member’s familiar didn’t heal me, I probably wouldn’t have stabilized.
Also, without giving anything away, I will just say the rewards are quite nice for this scenario.
Heya,
I'm about to run this scenario this coming week and had a couple of GM related questions.
Spoiler:
At the waterfall with the Draugr fight, are they meant to be stealthing or something? It seems if the bad guy wasn't wanting to be noticed, he wouldn't be leaving undead lying around the place.
Also, when the Draugr hit, is it an auto negative level or is the DC 12 like the nausea effect would be?
RPG Superstar 2013
