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

...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.

Well if it were not for the first part of this two-parter, this would be by far the worst scenario of the second edition, if you include the first part it only is the worst.

This suffers from the same problems I already explained in that review: Having a connection to the metaplot that is only revealed to the GM and the players only get a complete mess of incoherent stuff. Having the GM explaining for half an hour what happened in the two-parter AFTER the game is not a sign of good writing.

Other problems include the same problem regarding having everyone roll in skill challenges (and expecting over half of the players to succeed) MIGHT work in subtier 1-2 but in tier 5-6 the question is only if the untrained players fail or crit fail as they have no reasonable chance to contribute. This is BAD game design especially if you require MORE than half successes. This is just annoying and especially bad if 2 of the 3 blocks require you to use skills from the same set of Skills (all Wis based in one and all CHA based in the other block) Also some of the checks (for example the Athletics Check in A) are completely inconsequential.

The Chase: Who thought this was a good idea? No scaling for high/lowtier and needing as many successes as players is just insane. Whoever did this part did not think about any the consequences this will cause. So this is just complete mess and one of the least thought out mechanics I have seen since the reverse influence in the wayang adventure in PF1.
Also having the treasure bundles not adding up is another problem with either the writing or the development of the scenario.

And you should REALLY include in EVERY note to your writers for PF2 Scenarios: DO NOT USE SINGLE BOSS ENCOUNTERS. They do not work at all in the system. And doing one after an encounter and a chase which will have the players damaged without time to recover is just plain stupid.
I really, really hope to never see this kind of adventure design ever again. This two-parter ranks at the worst 5 things I have seen published by paizo even if I count the whole emerald spire levels as single releases. It is exceedingly rare to see a scenario that is a complete train wreck mechanically and story wise.

I cannot in in good conscience offer or schedule this two-parter.

I really enjoy how quickly connected these two parts are, allowing a GM to easily run a 6-8 hour "module slot" using these scenarios. I didn't play it like that, but it almost felt like I had with how clear cut the cliff-hanger was from the prior adventure. The skill challenges at the beginning and the chase were both super exciting for our group and we were able to easily get into it. The final fight is one of our most memorable thus so far in PFS2e and afterward one of our other players suggested that they wanted to see Qxal return in a multi-table scenario at a convention. And I feel like that's a good way to describe the later half of the scenario: It feels like the best part of a multi-table scenario. Being able to scream "Fire!" as you blast a giant fiendish moth with cannon-fire feels fantastic, and the fight itself is challenging without being impossible, even for our fairly under powered group. The dialogue felt natural and well written.

The scenario is not without it's flaws. "Giving back your loot" was really awkwardly shoehorned in. I understand why some players might want to, but our GM felt compelled to ask us at the end without us thinking of it and it made it kind of awkward. We also did get a point of infamy and I wish the entire party didn't get the infamy because one player "forgot" to non-lethal his attack of opportunity when someone else in the party already wanted everyone that we shouldn't kill him.

The boon is really cool and I love seeing unique feats on boon sheets.

Overall I liked 1-16 and 1-17 quite a bit. The end of this one is pretty epic too. There are some major flaws though that reduce my rating to 3 stars. See Spoilers for the flaws.

I really, really want to like this one. This has the potential to be one of the most fun boss fights I've ever seen in Paizo's OP, but the entire scenario needs to be well prepped, or otherwise, it is overly punishing to the players. My GM misread many a rule and both the party and players suffered as a result.

I could seeing this being a 5 star scenario in the right circumstance, but my playthough and followup reading was a 3, so I'm averaging it out to a 4 star.