A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 3–6 (subtiers 3–4 and 5–6).
The Pathfinder Society begins a perilous trek through the swamps and jungles of the Mwangi Expanse, searching for the location where the founding members of their organization formed the Open Road Pact. The clues the Pathfinders must follow are centuries old, however, and their best lead is the final logs of an ancient Pathfinder whose true fate may be markedly different than the world has been led to believe.
Written by: Chris Sims
Scenario tags: Metaplot
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
The story elements were fun and well flashed out. I enjoyed the exploration aspect, but wish it tied to delve a tiny bit deeper into the serpentfolk ruins or boggard presence. the early and middle parts helped to balance out the lack luster final encounter.
be nice if they added:
wish it tried to delve a tiny bit deeper into the serpentfolk ruins or boggard presence.
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I've run with these players many times before and have a decent feel for how much RP keeps them engaged, they are more the murder hobo types and tend to quickly grab the info needed to point them in the direction of the next loot piñata with some hijinks along the way.
The fights:
overall, first two fights had some good back and forth, last was a big disappointment.
Boggard fight, was the most engaging because of the terrain. The use of obscuring mists form the swampseeres helped to coax ranged closer. overall not super challenging.
Second fight against the Air elementals was where a couple players realized they should have packed some ranged weapons, but it didn't affect the fight because of the ranged were easily able to hit the ac of the cr 3 Zephyr Hawks and nuke the health pools. the cr 4 living whirlwind was a much more interesting opponent and I wish the scaling added more of those.
The last fight was severely underwhelming. In my experience, simply throwing more low level monsters at PCs doesn't make things more challenging, its far more effective to scale up the creatures. The high tier "sever encounter" using cr 3 enemies with 17ac is a joke with flanking most PCS will have around a 50% chance to crit, and +12 to hit from the monsters' is not much against level 6 pcs making the +1d4 negative damage from the corruption useless. All the enemies were easily swept up in 2 rounds.
I looked at the 3-4 range to see how that scaled, and that would be a far more difficult fight for players in that range. I don't know if there was an error that eh elite Wight was supposed to be in the 5-6 tier or if I missed an errata to the scenario.
The scenario has nice maps and challenging fights in which strategic use of the terrain makes a big difference. There is a sense and reason for what one encounters – things do tie together, though that connection may not always be obvious, which may be unsatisfying or disappointing.
I am a little bored of scenarios which expect Pathfinder agents to be neurotically obsessed with the history of the organization, or re-tracing the steps of Pathfinders gone-by. The organization feels stale in-game – instead of exploring strange new areas, they are obsessed with their own founder. And this really sucks for players new to society who haven't been following the soap opera lives of the thousand-and-one NPCs in nthe world, and who were simply looking for a good adventure game.
I am not saying that scenarios that look backwards or inwards are innately bad. But there are far too many of them in a season – in particular this season.
Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
I'm a little sad this is a 3-6 and not a 5-8. I think a lot of my local players will need to skip this with their -2001s who have played all the other metaplot quests on them.
Maximal play would be 00-19, so 20 scenarios/3 = 6.6 levels worth. Not counting quests or Plaguestone. I think there's two 1-4s people would have had to assign to secondary characters (overleveld on main) if they played strictly in order and didn't try to pre-plan for no 3-6's before level 5. But that still drops you to 6 levels worth of xp, of level 7 at the time they reach this. (Not counting some of the start at level 2 play test PCs around here)
This is the first time I've run into one of these PDFs where it doesn't bother including non-marked-up versions of the maps. Kinda ridiculous given that we're all having to run this stuff digitally. Hope this is an anomaly and doesn't become a regular thing.
This is the first time I've run into one of these PDFs where it doesn't bother including non-marked-up versions of the maps. Kinda ridiculous given that we're all having to run this stuff digitally. Hope this is an anomaly and doesn't become a regular thing.
We don't include unmarked versions of preprinted maps because they're a separate product available for sale on our site. The links where you can purchase them are included under the spoiler tag in the product information above.
All Year of the Open Road scenarios (and all new scenarios in general since last August) are written using PF2 rules and designed for the PFS2 campaign.
I enjoyed playing this scenario.
I have a question about the boon, please, for Michael or others on the Organized Play staff:
Spoiler:
In order for my character to use the limited-use "Waters of Warlock's Barrow" boon in a future scenario, do I need to slot it? Should it have a keyword, such as "General"?
Worst written scenario I've ever ran, I'll not run any more by this author. It's not that the story is bad, it's that the scenario is not laid out like most I've read. The skill check sections are written weird.
Organized Play Developer
