Pathfinder Society Scenario #1-17: The Perennial Crown Part 2, The Thorned Monarch

1-16 and 1-17 remain my favorite scenarios of season 1, now that season 1 is well past us. Other reviewers have already mentioned the sheer epicness of this two-parter, so I won't dwell on that except to say: YES. I have run both of these multiple times and would run them again in a heartbeat.

The skill check section at the beginning of 1-17 is nicely flavorful. Of course, it is entirely possible players will get into the first combat debuffed--that is the point. The justification for some of the treasure bundles is a bit silly but never mind that - the heavy-handedness of their placement can be forgiven. The chase scene is amazingly cool when set up right, instilling urgency and real tension. The boss fight is designed to be somewhat challenging even for well-balanced parties made of PCs that are all in the "right" tier, which I personally believe is the preferable approach. GMs who run for parties that might not fit this description should exercise the considerable freedom they have available within the strictures and tactics specified by the scenario.

As a GM, there are two things that make a scenario rewarding for me: first, the opportunity for a GM to add their own unique value to the experience; and second, the ability to place the players into situations where their hearts legitimately race and all their minds are directed towards a goal which actually matters to them at a visceral level.

This two-parter absolutely ticks those boxes for me.

As with all the scenarios that I love, this is not what I would call low-prep. But the payoff is worth it.

This has a more "action movie" bent to the two-parter. The scenario always felt like there was a strong pace to it, and that while the group was powerful we'd just uncovered something beyond our capabilities.

As such when we were escaping the island there was a lot of tension, and a good use of infamy mechanics during the scenario.

Our group copped the infamy, and two of our 5 players have characters that behave significantly differently in roleplay as a result of this scenario.

That alone gets it 5-stars.

This is best played right after part one with how it picks up. Doing that, made this adventure feel all the more exciting. Doing this one with out doing part one first, I might not thing as highly of then. Heck, I might even knock a star off if I had not played part one right before this one.

It's not often that I get to feel like a hero and a Pathfinder and this one gave me that feeling. I love scenarios where you help people that are really in danger. Not just the "oh they are in danger but mechanically they are invulnerable", no I mean in danger of the surroundings and in danger of you too. Pathfinder 2e's rule of making everyone trained in their own hands comes in handy here. Oh...did not mean to make that a pun.

The chase mechanics can be dangerous. Our parties rolls turned really well but I could see this being a pain if luck turns against you in it. But I can also see it being a nail biting chase so...it breaks on the side of good for me.

Combat at the end was not what I was expecting, and that is a positive. It's nice when a melee character is not useless in combat where ranged people are powerful. I sometimes felt stronger than the casters. I like that, I feel like I'm helping. I'm not sidelined.

Overall, best played right after part one. If not, your mileage might vairy.

I GM’ed this for high tier.

1-17 The Perennial Crown Part 2: The Thorned Monarch is the second-half of the Perennial Crown mini campaign, written by Alexander Augunas. It is the climactic second act of the campaign, where the PCs must rescue themselves, and innocent bystanders, from the thousand-year-old machinations of the season’s recently-revealed villain.

However, if 1-16 could be called a strong start replete with interesting opportunities to explore Bhopan’s culture and people, 1-17 is something of a shaky finish packed with combat and skill challenges, and very little time to breathe or think.

Part of this is by design. The narrative demands a sense of rising tension leading to the dramatic showdown with the scenario’s villain. In this sense, the constant state of urgency is expressed rather well. Limiting opportunities to rest and recover, and throwing PCs from skill challenge to encounter, or encounter to skill challenge, certainly adds a sense of drama and tension. There is a desperation present, a notion that the PCs have stumbled across something they cannot possibly defeat, and now they must rescue themselves and their allies from danger before everything is lost.

Furthermore, the scenario introduces consequences to what the PCs have done in Act 1. Although the PCs were offered the opportunity to earn advantages in their efforts there, those advantages come with a price that is paid in Act 2. I appreciate the effort to mechanically tie consequences into the narrative, although I will touch on why this doesn’t work out very well later. For now, let me just say that I commend the effort and would like to see more multipart stories try to do this.

Now, onto the challenges. The scenario opens with a series of skill challenges which I am, honestly, not a fan of. These skill challenges present no interesting choices to the players and feel like they exist to fill time. Moreover, they punish groups for being unlucky, taking away treasure for no discernable reason. There is no sense of consequence for failing these checks. You had to make them, you failed, and you were punished by narrative fiat. It would be far better, I think, to present the PCs with interesting decisions that force them to weigh risk and reward. Exploring a side tunnel might unearth interesting treasure, or it might expose them to mind-corrupting fungi. Or both. But the current skill challenge paradigm just doesn’t work for telling a good story--it’s just giving players a reason to roll dice.

After the challenge are a series of combats. Neither are particularly noteworthy, but are designed with enough tactical interest to keep players engaged. My party, a group of four martial classes and two clerics, definitely took a beating in some places, but always managed to clinch victory in the end without much risk of a TPK.

Then comes the chase. As with 1-16’s debut of the Infiltration rules, 1-17 serves as an introduction to chases. However, the PCs are not the pursuers in this particular chase, but the pursued, fleeing a foe they cannot hope to defeat. In a sense I rather enjoy this as a way to urge PCs to run away and, like 1-16, the chase rules are light-weight and comprehensive enough to easily explain.

If I did have one objection, however, it would again refer to the way the scenario’s reward scheme is structured. If you do not perform perfectly in the chase--including multiple critical successes--you won’t get the treasure. Simple as that. Personally, I think this isn’t a very interesting situation and would rather have tempted players with the treasure, even though their foe was close behind them. Going back to my emphasis on consequences and choice, having the players leave the treasure behind because they chose safety over danger (at least this once) feels a bit more fair than simply saying “well you barely made it back, so you missed out.”

But let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Something you're probably aware of if you've talked to others about this scenario, or read other reviews. If the Grand Dance was the setpiece of Part 1, the climactic conclusion with a huge monster definitely the highlight of Part 2, and also where the PCs learn their previous choices carry dire consequences. Or so it would seem.

Here’s the problem--and stop reading now if you want to avoid spoilers--the final fight is just too damn hard. Yes, the villain is dramatic and powerful and, quite frankly, terrifying. The players in my group felt a real, visceral fear in fighting this thing, and collectively breathed a sigh of relief when they finally defeated it. The victory was hard-won, but that had more to do with luck than anything else. I will explain.

When it comes to encounter design, I would ask authors and designers to reconsider the “big boss” paradigm. Although such foes do add a sense of grandiosity and scale to a storyline, they are also extraordinarily frustrating encounters for unlucky groups, who often feel like their poor performance is due to bad rolls rather than bad tactics. Indeed, my party executed rather clever strategies against this foe, but still felt stymied by a rash of bad luck and low rolls. Furthermore, the foe’s massive crit rate made the combat feel extraordinarily swingy, and left most players feeling bitter during the combat’s low point.

1-17 is an ambitious scenario that attempts to provide a tense and dramatic conclusion to the rising action of 1-16. However several flaws in the scenario’s design detract from the otherwise excellent atmosphere developed by the mechanics and narrative. 1-17 might have been one of my favorite scenarios, with one of my favorite fights, had it not felt unbalanced against the players.

In the end, I still recommend 1-17 as a scenario, since I think it provides a good bookend to the story established in 1-16, and the boon isn’t too bad. However, I would caution players going into it that the scenario is going to be a hard one, because unless they are very lucky they are going to suffer, and they will need to find success in failure. Because sometimes, as Pathfinders, getting out alive is reward enough.

...But seriously, I was expecting something way worse experience from the other ones.

For sake of transparency, I run this for five player party with level 3, 4, 4, 5, 6 for total of 18 CP on lower subtier.

Okay so first: Yes the boss is severe level boss that is 3 level higher than lower level of the players on the tier. Yes that is bad is party with mixed characters of low and high tier players on the higher tier, but that is always the case when characters players up in this edition, you want to avoid it as much as possible anyway.

I was worried about the mooks with fascinate in final encounter(especially since my party had max amount of them), but as it turns out, the save was low enough that only 3 of characters failed it(and one of them was animal companion) so it wasn't exactly hard for them to prevent it.

And one of reviews here ignore that the "bonus" on final encounter is REALLY really strong vs the final boss. Like my party missed twice with it with really bad rolls and then crit majority of boss' health. Fireball also did massive damage to boss and as it turns out alchemist are greatest weakness of bosses with elemental weakness due to spash damage triggering the weakness.

But yeah, I acknowledge that boss fight is hard and with certain party combination it can be extremely hard. I acknowledge that chase scene is scaled weirdly(its hardest for 6 level 3 players and incredibly easy for higher tier characters). But none of it is as broken or unfair as other reviews make it sound.

...I think I spent most of the review rebuting other reviews.*sigh* Anyway, so here is what you need to know: This duology is what Devil at the crossroad and lodge of living god should have been: Split the roleplaying part and action heavy part into two different scenarios. Those two scenarios are great but run too long for single scenarios and would have worked better as two part scenarios.

Besides that I thought action worked well(though I can see why parties with composition not suited for them or with really bad luck would disagree, but I can't help but feel that other reviews either didn't give scenario chance, run into borderline situation that won't happen to most parties or had GM run it weirdly), the scenario has incredible descriptions of events. Like the one for manifestation shows up? Yeah everything from that point onward is gold if you ask me.

There are two things I WILL critize the scenario for though: To get second fame, you pretty much need perfect dice luck or give up all the treasure bundles you found(the first condition for it is possible to fail with bad luck but players need to be careless) Well perfect is exaggeration, but point is that I could see some parties being screwed out of it with just bad luck.

Second thing is that I do agree its kinda bs that mooks in final boss encounters are in theory capable of tpking the party with just bad luck :P They don't even have incapacitation trait despite their effect being that trait's description basically. It wouldn't be bad in normal four level 3 player version with just one of them, but depending on party composition the scaled up versions can make that more likely.