A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 3–7.
A strange confluence of circumstances leaves the researchers of Uringen understaffed and in need of able-bodied assistants. Conveniently, recent Pathfinder Society experiments call for a rare reagent found only in that area, and the two organizations have negotiated a mutually beneficial deal. Can the PCs reach the secluded settlement in time to witness this extraordinary event—and handle the phenomenon’s aftermath?
Written by Liz Courts.
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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Played it first, going to run it next week. We started at noon, and was rushing/calling it at 7pm. There were quite a few 'neat' aspects to the game, and a LOT of the fun is going to be decided by what GM you have. The infamous puzzle is tough, but not impossible, it took a little teamwork of thought, but eventually I and one of the other guys worked it out and was successful. (Make sure you print out a color version of the hand out... which our GM did NOT.. lol). I haven't read the thing entirely yet, but we were told we lost gold/loot if we got clues and most of the clues we had already figured out. Only complaint is that it should have gone into more detail and stretched into a 2 or 3 parter. Seems like too much content was crammed into one scenario, imho. I would've liked to have had more time to 'play' without rushing.
This scenario had some fun ideas, but all of the encounters (and the puzzle) had very real issues. We were playing with a party of 6 on the 3-4 tier, with mostly level 3 and 4 characters. Our GM had run the scenario before and seemed unhappy with the scenario from the very beginning.
Encounter 1:
The town square fight was really shaping up to be an entertaining and memorable one. We started out in the middle, far away from the enemies who closed in on us. We were all eager to experiment with the portals but found it extremely difficult to make a DC 25 Will save at level 3. That didn't stop us from playing with them anyway and hoping for a good random exit. This fight put a smile on our faces until the Greater Invisibility/Scorching Ray action started one-shotting people. At level 3, we didn't have any tools to deal with the Greater Invisibility, flight, or massive amount of healing required to wait it out. One of the gremlins had gotten onto the roof of a building far from us and we were afraid to venture out of the Obscuring Mist, so this combat dragged on for far too long. I think that at low tier the Scorching Ray wand should have had a lower caster level to lessen the chance of outright killing a level 3 character in the first combat.
Encounter 2:
This fight was fun and funny, never really much of a danger. I still don't understand why this animated object has DR rather than Hardness, though.
Encounter 3:
The tight space and favored-enemy-human archer enemies made this fight a lot more dangerous than we expected. After one player was almost dropped by the four attacks on the first round, we hurried to deal with the archers, pulling some focus from the gremlins wrecking the clock mechanism. The gremlin on the far side of the room took two rounds to reach and we failed to drop him in the third round. Apparently his 1 nonlethal damage per round was still enough to break the clock that had survived for over a century without any maintenance, and we lost 1 prestige. Bummer.
Puzzle:
We were approaching our time limit by this point and I think that everybody was a little fried, but we still got into the spirit of what seemed to be a really cool puzzle and tried a lot of variations on what ended up being the correct answer. We picked up on the mechanism of the portals right away and were very close to figuring it out in our initial attempt. However, the "Proceed in an orderly fashion" note on the back of the map felt kind of misleading and prevented us from figuring out where to begin, so we ended up spinning our wheels. Faced with the lack of time, we reluctantly asked for a clue which told us nothing we hadn't already figured out. This continued until the final clue, which was the vital piece of information you would otherwise have no way to expect. This was really a big disappointment because the puzzle could have been a satisfying perk-up before the final fight, but instead it totally took the wind out of our sails.
Final encounter:
Our party face had to leave during the puzzle because we were now over time, so we tried diplomacy on the dryad and were really excited when we rolled an 18 (along with one aid another) to reach a peaceful conclusion. The only problem was that the DC was 28 and we had only achieved a 26 with our level 3 characters. Unable to convince her to let us both achieve our primary objective and leave the tower intact, she attacked us. Wow, she was a piece of work designed to kill a PC. Thankfully, this was just an awful room for her to fight in and we were able to encircle her. I'm not sure we would have actually finished her off as her AC was making it hard to land a hit, but the GM called it as he needed to leave and we were left with a hurried wrap-up.
I learned a valuable lesson playing this scenario. When the GM is apologizing for how poorly designed the encounters are before you even begin, pay attention. Several of us at the table agreed that this was our new least favorite PFS scenario and were all happy that we would never have to play it again.
I ran this at GenCon and really enjoyed it. The mechanics in it are fun, even if you do need to pay attention as a GM to ensure the players don't get side tracked.
The final battle varies depending on the choices players make, and I really loved that aspect of it... even if I did have to prep two separate BBEG fights.
The only negative is the scenario almost ran overtime and it still felt like a lot was chopped out. My players really wanted to explore the freaky town, but if I'd let them do all they wanted to do, they would have gone overtime and I would have had to improvise a tonne of answers (not enough detail in the scenario on the whys and wherefores of the town itself). I know this is a scenario and should be short, but the bit with the ranger at the beginning would have been a better trim... and I get the feeling they didn't just to keep up the encounters that have a CR.
Would have made a 5 star module if all the ideas I can imagine got squeezed out were left in.
Anyway, still highly enjoyable and I'd recommend giving it a go!
I ran this for a group of experienced PFS players, including some of my regular GMs and my VC. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the players said they did too.
First off, let me admit a bias: I really enjoy GMing the fey. They're great for messing with players (which I know players find frustrating).
We had a seven-strong party (due to a mix-up with invites), run at tier 3-4. In the end, no one was in any great danger of getting killed.
The core of the module is puzzle-solving. It needs plenty of prep to get the hang of the puzzle before running the session, so be warned. And if your players hate puzzle-solving, they aren't going to like the scenario.
Initially, my players were nervous of the portals and avoided them, but eventually got the hang of them, even using them in combat (though not as effectively as their enemies). That didn't make it much easier for them to solve the puzzle, and while they worked out through much of the problem themsevles, they did need the final clue. That lost them a boon - and once they had worked it out, they kicked themselves for not having realised the final piece of the puzzle.
They also failed to impress their guides, losing perhaps the nicest boon I've seen in PFS.
They did, however, manage to achieve both primary and secondary mission objectives without a hitch.
After the session, I played "Still Alive", from the first Portal computer game. Those who knew got a chuckle from that (and explained it to the others).
The pros
It's an atmospheric scenario, and very well written. It draws heavily on the previously published Guide to the River Kingdoms, working in the background very well, without making that guide absolutely necessary to play.
The premise is great. Time shifts, teleportals, fey, all welded together relatively seamlessly. There's a lot of thought gone into helping players solve the puzzle, but a declining level of rewards for how many clues they're given. I also enjoyed the method of giving them clues. It's very well thought out.
There are some stunningly good boons on offer, but they are difficult to achieve. That's as it should be - boons should be worth having. And I liked that most of them weren't tied in to the success conditions.
The cons
The module loses a star because it's not readily apparent that travel through the portals is random, nor is there a built-in randomiser. I ended up printing out the town and tower maps, scribbling reminders of how the portals worked on them, and labelling portals to make it convenient for rolling a die to find out which a player pops out in.
There's also one portal missing from the village square map. That doesn't have any real impact on the scenario, but hey.
Those who like to extract battlemaps and print them out will find the portals won't come with the maps, leaving you to add them in Illustrator or with a pen after printing.
Player A: "At least you never have to play that scenario again."
Player B: "Thank God."
That was the reaction of two of my players today and sums up the overall feeling at the end of the scenario.
The setting is vibrant and full of imagery and the basic ideas behind the clocktower and portals are fun and exciting.
The puzzle sapped all the fun out of the adventure. The handout is poor. The clues are poor. The solution is poor. The players did eventually get the solution after receiving all the clues, but by that time the fun was gone. Multiple players had effectively given up at that point and just wanted the scenario to be over - so the diplomacy at the end never really got going.
One of the possible BBEGs is an archer in close quarters using swift action bane on a weapon. Bane + 3 attacks = Character killed in one round, then surrounded and stomped because there's nowhere to go. That is not a fun final combat for anyone. The other combats in the scenario (low tier) posed no threat at all and were wiped out almost instantly.
The scenario gets a second star for the setting being interesting and vibrant and I liked some of the NPCs. The combats were blah and the puzzle is unfortunate.
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I'm running this 5+ times at Gen Con, Liz. If you want to swing by and see how it's going, just look for the jolly roger flag I always fly at my table when I'm GMing.
I've already got accents picked out for several of the NPCs, and something fun for "ze sack" too!
What height is the clockwork tower? Height of the individual floors? I'm hoping to build a to scale model for when I GM this scenario later this month.
The 4 player scaling for one of the encounters is missing. The following is an official addition to the scenario, which will be included in any future modifications to the PDF.
Scaling:
Make the following adjustments to the Nithra's Fury encounter to accommodate a party of 4 PCs.
Subtier 3–4: Remove one of the quicklings from the encounter, and reduce each quickling's number of doses of poison to 1.
Subiter 6–7: Remove one of the quickling cutthroats from the encounter, and reduce each quickling's number of doses of poison to 1.
So, judging from the reveiws, people seem to like this scenario except for the puzzle.
I'm thinking of using this for a non-PFS game. If I do, are there any changes that could be made to the puzzle to make it work better for my group? Is there an obvious flaw that just needs to be corrected, or is the entire premise of the puzzle off-base?
From the GM discussion, I think an indication of progress would be a good thing to add. Everytime they take a correct step in the solution, have the clocktower chime. (Especially if you've primed them by mentioning there is no bell or chime mechanism visible.) Then when they make a wrong turn, reset it back to the start. A puzzle with no feedback about right or wrong is highly frustrating.
@Tamago: well, people are also pointing out that the combats in the scenario are poorly written, and that the plot sets up an interesting location (the disappearing village) and then does absolutely nothing with that. So no, it's not just the puzzle.
The puzzle itself has two major problems. The first is that the PCs don't actually get enough information to solve it, and have to rely on assumptions, trial and error (this is why people suggest a progress indicator, but the underlying issue is simply that the required information isn't there).
The second is that it's a huge immersion breaker. In character, the puzzle has no reason to be there, and the PCs have no reason to believe that hopping through portals will somehow get the plot going. There's no roleplaying involved; it's a strictly mechanical experience (i.e. a "soup can puzzle").
There are several cool fey-based scenarios in PFS, e.g. the Sanos Abduction, or the Pallid Plague. I recommend using one of those instead.