A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 7–11.
The time has come to strike down the vile Korholm Agenda, the faction of the Aspis Consortium that launched a staggering attack against the Pathfinder Society a year ago. The Agenda’s leader has allied himself with one of the most powerful men in Thuvia, and together they are on the cusp of pitching the entire region into a brutal war of conquest and greed. The Pathfinder Society has placed its trust in the PCs to stop this internecine conflict. To do so, they must confront the Korholm Agenda’s leader in his own domain.
Content in “Ageless Ambitions” also contributes directly to the ongoing storyline of the Sovereign Court faction. Content in this scenario also ties into a special metaplot element from Pathfinder Society Special #6–98: "Serpents Rise." Players who have completed that special event are encouraged to bring its Chronicle sheet when playing this adventure.
Written by Luis Loza.
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No spoilers about plot in this review, but it does have some meta-gamey info about the difficulty level.
Leading up to this game, I heard of 2 other local groups that tackled this scenario/module, and in each case multiple PCs died. So I came into the module forewarned. I bought some extra gear and tried to buff up. I was a level 10 druid with the standard pounce tiger companion. We played high tier.
Right next to our table, another group was doing the same module at low tier. In low tier nobody died and they finished the game in 4 or 4.5 hours.
In our game, 1 PC died, almost everyone went unconscious multiple times, and my animal companion should have died (an ally killed my attacker just moments before it got a turn). Oh, and it took 5.5 hours to play through the scenario, and that's with the GM avoiding the first encounter (diplomacy builds bypassed it) and he called the 2nd fight halfway through. I suspect it would have been 6 hours otherwise.
So of the 4 games I've seen/played/heard about, 3 caused PC death. That puts this module up there in terms of lethality. However, it's a new module, so maybe over time other groups will find ways to trivialize the encounters. You never know.
What I can say is that the monsters have a lot of moving parts at high levels. The GM actually had us looking up rules while he ran monsters, since there a lot of powers/abilities to adjudicate. If you are GMing this, know that some fringe feats from Dirty Tactics Toolbox are used by NPCs, so you'll need some extra planning time to learn about those and how to use them (if you're not already familiar).
I would have to say that this module at high tier felt like some of the older modules that had a "hard mode." Remember those? Like Weapon In The Rift, where hard mode meant the monster CRs were like 1 higher than normal? This module felt like that. It was very do-able, not terrible if you're competent, but also not a cakewalk. If your group is shaky or not well-organized, it will cost you in this one.
I enjoyed this scenario. I wish our group had been high enough to play the higher tier, which I understand was a bit more challenging. I was happy to be able to finish off the story arc that I got to be a part of at Gen Con 2015.
My one complaint was that it seemed rather anti-climactic.
Meta Plot spoilers:
So after the epic assault on the Grand Lodge and assassination of Arem Zey, it turns out just to be a Sczarni faction re-boot, Aspis style? Meh. In my opinion that is uninspired. The writers created an epic rivalry between two organizations for a full season (after spending all of season 6 setting up the rivalry), then wiped it away by blaming it on someone else pretending to be Aspis agents. All for money and power too... so cliche.
I get that this scenario wasn't the big reveal of the splinter Aspis faction, and I am not really holding that against this scenario. This just seemed like the best place to state how un-exciting I felt the ending to season 7 really was. Not a bad ending, just not exciting.
Note what I mentioned above, I did enjoy this scenario. My constructive criticism is that this scenario suffers from much of the same things the vast majority of scenarios suffer from, which is a strict adherence to a scenario formula. A handful of quick combat stops on a railroad from beginning to end. You do have the ability to choose what order you arrive at a couple of those stops, but in the end you are really just along for the ride until you get to the final reveal.
Is this more of a tear the aspsis apart confront or more of a socialite encounter? Bronze house reprisal's blurb made it sound more hackey slashy than it was.
I'm going to guess (given info from other scenarios) that this is going to be a hack and slash, similar in some ways to Vengeance at Sundered Crag. But obviously I'm not the one with the actual answers.
Is this more of a tear the aspsis apart confront or more of a socialite encounter? Bronze house reprisal's blurb made it sound more hackey slashy than it was.
Spoiler:
Like many adventures, there's lots of room to use skills in interesting ways. This does, however, have ample opportunity—even necessity—to "problem-solve" with violence.
Pathfinder Society Lead Developer
