Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-14: Debt to the Quah

There's a really interesting and original premise to Debt to the Quah. A year ago, a Pathfinder named Lumketul "discovered" what he thought was an ancient Thassilonian vault and looted the place, later publishing his "findings" in a volume of the Pathfinder Chronicles. The Society needs to institute some peer review practices, because it turns out Lumketul was completely wrong--the place wasn't Thassilonian but instead a Shoanti burial vault! When word of what happened spread, the Shoanti entrusted with taking care of the remote site were understandably angry. Now, as Venture-Captain Ambrus Valsin explains in a briefing, the PCs need to apologise for Lumketul's actions (the bungler himself having disappeared--a curious mystery that I don't think ever gets resolved) on behalf of the Society and, hopefully, repair the damage with a scavenger's stone (a magical item which can repair broken objects). I love the premise because usually the PCs are cast as the tomb raiders and graverobbers, but here they're more in the role of responsible archaeologists looking to preserve history and maintain good relations with the traditional custodians of the land. Obviously, there are echoes of real-world controversies here, and I like how the scenario handles the theme without coming across as didactic or saccharine.

After the briefing, the PCs are teleported to the famous Storval Stairs in Varisia for a meeting with an assembled council of Shoanti leaders. If you've played a lot of PFS and SFS, you can probably guess what happens next. The PCs need to win over a certain number of individual councillors to gain acceptance of the Shoanti's apology and permission to travel to the damaged sepulchre and repair it. I find that the enjoyability of these influence challenges really depends on the GM--some are really able to bring the NPCs to life for some memorable role-playing, while to others they're just names and requests for skill checks. The scenario does everything it can to assist the GM, with full descriptions of each council member, along with role-playing suggestions. The NPCs are interesting and diverse. I like how one of the council members simply can't be swayed (and later tries to undermine the PCs with the others), and that there's a lot of little bonuses, penalties, and complications depending on how the PCs role-play (though sometimes things that affect interaction with every NPC are buried in the description of a particular one, which makes good GM prep necessary). I think my only main issue with these influence encounters in general is that the writers try too hard to make it so every PC can be involved, and thus provide for all sorts of physical and knowledge-based checks to persuade NPCs, while the traditional influence skills (Diplomacy, Bluff, and Intimidate) often get comparatively very high DCs! That means that a "face" character doesn't get a chance to shine in exactly the type of encounter they should.

Anyway, after the council meeting, the PCs head to the sepulchre. This happens whether they were a rousing success or a pitiful failure, and there's no in-game consequences either way--which is poor writing, in my opinion. I know there are penalties reflected on the Chronicles, but it's really frustrating as a player during the session to feel like your group's actions don't really have any consequences on what happens.

The remainder of the scenario takes place in the Shoanti burial vault and uses the classic Dungeon flip-mat to good effect. A real strength of the scenario is that this isn't a generic dungeon experience of the "one monster and treasure in each room" type. There are some monsters, of course (and very cool ones at the exit, as seen on the cover!), along with some flavourful haunts that help tell more about Shoanti culture. But the core task in each room is to figure what needs to be repaired or restored, and how to go about it. It's a sort of "reverse dungeon crawl" that provides the positive experience of restoring cultural artefacts to their proper place instead of looting them. Along the way, the scenario provides some good opportunities to use rarely-invoked skills like Appraise, Craft, and Sleight of Hand.

Debt to the Quah is one of those scenarios that's deeper than it may appear at first glance. Having played it and then read it for the purposes of this review, I'm pretty impressed and definitely recommend it--especially if you have PCs that have more to offer than just hacking and slashing.

2) There's a serious typo with the haunt in area A10. The text says that the haunt manifests in the room. However, the haunt's stat block says in multiple places that the effects occur in A8. It seemed weird to me for a haunt in its statblock to specify which room it appeared, so I wasn't entirely sure if it was typo or that the haunt is supposed to manifest in a different room. After rereading the text 5 times while my players patiently waited, I decided to just skip the encounter and say the haunt manifested uselessly in another room.

3) It feels really weird from a story perspective that the party has to destroy the tomb's guardian. The party spends the whole scenario fixing things only to have to break something at the scenario's climax. And if they don't kill the guardian, it counts against their success conditions. It's especially odd given that the party has to clean up a mess caused by the rogue Pathfinder breaking the guardian. Now they have to mess up the room again? I would have expected maybe the party defeating the golem and then restoring it, but by this point in the scenario, most parties will have run out of charges in the scavenger's stone.