A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 1-5.
As a repurposed prison, the Sandswept Hall Pathfinder lodge in Sothis is an imposing target for thieves, yet an enemy operative recently broken in, stole valuable property, and escaped into the sun-scorched deserts of eastern Osirion. The PCs are the best disposed to follow the culprit's trail. Be warned, though, for the Scorpion Coast is the battleground of powerful elemental tribes that have assailed Osirion's frontier with cruel sandstorms and deadly force for millennia.
Content in The Sandstorm Prophecy also contributes directly to the ongoing storyline of the Scarab Sages faction.
tl;dr: no highpoint; cliche NPCs; no solution; no depth - storywise;
I've run this game just yesterday. In the tier 1-2 with seasoned PnP-players.
Spoiler:
First off, my players had no skill monkey. So the whole backstory as far as it goes, remained a mystery. They got all the clues available without the different skill checks (Planes, Local, History, Nature, Arcane, Craft: Stonemasonry), but there was nothing to gain.
First the theft itself, with little information regarding what was stolen, why for example or how or how difficult a theft it was.
This adventure had a good start, Sothis is a good location. An inspection throughout the city, meeting people, chasing snitches, would have been very interesting. If the adventure would have made this theft a great big crime, showing the effort it took and therefore the importance and power of those involved. The answer the players are finally getting "She is involved with the yadda-yadda-group." would have been far more rewarding. But no the players are looking for the information what she did after that and where she went to, because their plothook "Something-was-stolen... get it back", which is what one usually aims for, was important to them. The theft and information which group she worked for never connected in the beginning and therefore wasnt satisfying.
Instead, players get forcefed the cliche animosity of characters without any depth to them. I am very windy - I am very earthy - We hate each other - done. *sigh*
In the end my players preferred the wind elemental (which they first met) simply because it was talking faster. Of course, they didn't act in combat. There was no reason given, to prefer any side. Which in my eyes led to often described problem that players try to make peace. Which would have been interesting and impactful. If it had been the focus of the whole story all along. It wasn't.
This could have been also an interesting point and goal, but no. Wasted. Instead players return to the lodge and get the feedback, that the important mission wasn't a success, someone more experienced pathfinders will do that. Which is of course after getting shipped out of absalom to a terribly dangerous and wondrous place. Which is all in all insulting to the players and the GM.
Lastly even if my players would have gotten all the information available, it's all over the place. And everything leds to the conclusion, that this is only the first part, of a bigger story perhaps. Owning the second part, which is more interesting (but I haven't played it yet) I must admit, it doesn't deliver on this. Because the second part has yet another story it's based unto.
The scenario had different skill checks, nice places (not interesting or fascinating, nice), the opportunity for combat and not combat. So it earned a star.
Only played and not read through afterwards, from a high tier (APL 3.4) play through aspect only. I was the only one playing one of the new races in this and we had no real casters, good thing we had some wands.
Using enough skills we were able to gather enough information to get a good idea of what was going on at this location, for right or wrong but enough that it worked out. Spouse played at another table and they did not have the skills needed so they were really clueless when they needed to make a decision.
Not going into make details but two of the fights were hard pressed on us, teamwork and wand use got us all through it and we had fun. I caused us as a group of veteran players to get creative and think of different approaches so was nice it was not straight forward on parts of it.
I am disappointed to hear from other reviews that there is no reporting on the party's choice. That is a huge missed opportunity for PFS to grant the society some way have an effect. Hopefully it does give a chance in the other parts for that.
I am looking forward to playing through the series. I also would encourage people to have play some of the new races during this season.
This is written from the perspective of the player in the upper tier
Walked into this not really knowing what to expect. I've done the Season 8 special so thought I might get to move forward on that plot. Most other 3 part scenarios were really good and told a great story. My hope here is that this one still does.
We gathers a lot of info but nothing concrete on the objective. there was 1 difficult combat because most of the party wasn't really prepared properly but that's expected. For me, I'm playing a cavalier in the order of the dragon, lots of diplomacy and member of liberty's edge. i'm looking for the RP and chances to shorten the game with some good diplomacy. because of a choice in path, we get stuck with a guy that wanted everything killed. it didn't sit right with me.
after the first combat (and I won't go into the OP of a CR 3 creature), we were able to use diplomacy to skip encounter 2 for us. the the final encounter was terrible. We didn't think choosing a side was an option. we knew nothing about one of the sides and the only thing we got from the other was a feeling of simple kill things. It felt like picking the lesser of two evils. We avoided the final encounter as well with diplomacy but still had to choose a side which makes absolutely no sense.
I give it 3 only because the GM allowed us to end the final encounter without conflict. Maybe it has nothing to do with the season 8 story and maybe the choice doesn't do much in anything else.
There's no reporting of it either so why have a choice? Why force players to make a choice of one side or the other if you aren't reporting it in any way and it doesn't effect the future scenarios. that seems rather weak to force a choice by the players with very little information to base the choice on. For our group it came down to which path we took.
This scenario was a very interesting one with a ver great illusion of choice at the beginning but the forced choice in the final encounter feels wrong compared to what we can expect from other scenarios in this season.
Mechanically everything seems fine but the difficulty was very erratic between the encounters.
A fantastic and fun romp with only two problems (but one is a potential biggie)
I ran this last week for a table with a mix of veteran players and relatively new players. Everybody had a good time, and certain parts of it (room with the chest) had them laughing and (mock-horrified) crying and laughing again all within the span of a minute.
There is a good balance of knowledge checks, physical skill checks, social skill checks / RP, combat-that-can't-be-avoided, and combat-that-can-be-avoided. All in all, this is a scenario I would love to run for new players looking to get into PFS/Pathfinder as it has a little bit of everything for everybody. As Yoda would put it, this scenario contains "only what you bring with you" - a combat-heavy party would enjoy themselves, a diplomacy-focused party would enjoy themselves, and a skill-focused party would enjoy themselves, methinks.
As far as I can see, this scenario only has two things working against it. The minor bit is that the PCs spend the lion's share of the scenario interacting with one of two NPCs. The decision as to which NPC they encounter and RP with is almost purely arbitrary - take path A and you meet NPC A or take path B and you meet NPC B. I would have liked it if the GM could be given a little leeway to nudge PCs in one direction or another based on the party's makeup and/or their introduction/briefing RP.
This, however, is really minor, and wouldn't detract from me giving this scenario a 5-star rating if not for the big issue...
The final encounter:
So, we've run this scenario 3 times at our FLGS, and every single time, the PCs' first instinct is to try and find a third solution - to get the two sides to some sort of truce. Even the party that was mostly fighters/melee types looked at 5 elementals in front of them and one behind them and went "Whoa, hold on, we can find a way to work this out, gang," rather than immediately grabbing their weapons. The fact that the scenario doesn't even account for this possibility nor give any guidance at all to GMs (aside from the PFS messageboards where the answer was "nope, you must pick a side or else you fail the mission") is a big gaping hole in an otherwise almost-perfect scenario. I get that in the world of Golarion, there are sometimes groups who simply cannot see eye-to-eye and cannot work together or even come to a truce, but having it boil down to "pick side A or B or fail your mission" feels kind of cheap to me - especially since the side the PCs get the most experience dealing with is chosen in a potentially random way.
PS - Another issue that has nothing to do with the scenario itself but rather the end-matter...for a scenario that forces PCs to make a choice between A and B in such a stark way, it actually baffled me that there were no "Reporting Notes" to indicate which side the PCs chose. One of my players who picked up the scenario after I ran it (to prep it to GM the following week) was so shocked that she couldn't stop herself from vocalizing it, prompting every other player there into a (verbal or visual) "What?!?!" response.
Even though that one issue resonates pretty deeply with me, this is definitely a 5-star scenario that just happens to have one moderately-sized miss in it - not enough for it to be considered in a bad light by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, this one is probably going in my "favorite scenarios to run on short notice" file. All in all - a very fun scenario!
This is very interesting are there going to be a set of three part scenarios that go with Earth and Water as well?
In Response:
Each of the elemental planes features in several different scenarios, and we're providing a roughly equal amount of screen time to each. In some cases—as is true for the Planes of Air and Fire—a lot of that spotlight occurs in multi-part series. Earth and Water have some unifying themes, but they're currently scheduled as independent adventures. I find making too many multi-parters makes adventures difficult to schedule, so I endeavor to limit it to adventures that really call for that treatment.
Something about that first sentence seemed a bit wrong to me while reading and after some consideration i guess there´s a "n" too much in "broken in" if i´m not mistaken.
Something about that first sentence seemed a bit wrong to me while reading and after some consideration i guess there´s a "n" too much in "broken in" if i´m not mistaken.
Or a missing Present Perfect auxiliary verb "has." Though in that case "stole" needs to be changed to a Past Participle as well. Given that the rest of the paragraph is in the present tense I'd go with the second option.
I hope one day we'll get a Superdungeon involving the Scorpion Coast and Rovagug. After all, the Rough Beast does have a cult of worshipers in Osirion who would just love to release a new Spawn of Rovagug. :D
I find it odd that there are no reporting instructions in this scenario. I can't find any information directing GMs to report which tribe the players side with, or if they negotiate in one encounter where that is a very valid option:
Qiarah:
I would think the decision to negotiate or attack Qiarah would have important consequences based on which tribe the players side with.
Pathfinder Society Lead Developer
