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:
I have now run and played this scenario. It is an entertaining romp through the countryside with a decent mix of skill, social and combat encounters in different environments.
There are a couple of issues. This has the potential to run long, especially if you allow the investigation portion to take up time after you have already run two separate events.
The scenario also shows signs of Paizo ignoring their own rules, a common element of PF1 scenarios. We have people trecking through bogs/marsh and hiking through hills but apparently able to do so at full movement speed whilet also conducting exploration activities which would normally slow them to half speed. All of this is rather handwaved by the scenario which just uses the base moveemnt speed. Given the travel is a key bit it would have been nicer if the scenario actually reflected those difficulties and then either adjusted the distance to keep within timescales or adjusted the likely timescale to account for the slowness.
The conbat encounters were fine. When I ran it my group handled the first pretty easily, they arent very threatning. The second encounter serves as a reminder for people to buy ranged weapons and the third was the cloest I have come to a TPK in 2E yet. A low tier group survived just as they got very lucky. +14 to hit against level 3's and 4's is pretty brutal, especially with a bunch of durable enemies on top.
Enemies:
The CP scaling had a low tier group of 6 facing the elite wight and 4 skeletal champions. The wight hits like a truck and the combintation of temp HP refreshing evey time he hit along with fast healing kept him in the fight right until the end. Skeletal champions are just annoyingly durable, even with the group learning about skeletons and picking up some bludgeoning weapons in town. Again, fast healing on top of that means they stay around for even longer.
The first two thirds of this module were literally in one ear and out the other for me. Nothing really drew me into them in story, plot, or combat. But that was not a bad thing. I do recall they were fun, but nothing that really impacted me or left much of any memory.
The last combat though, that was fun. It can be a difficult fight if you take the obvious path, but thinking like a pathfinder and finding new ways to do it, you get something interesting and kind of iconic in a way. I have to give it to the designers for putting the topography elevations on the map. That was a smart addition.
The scenario was quite good, the story was interesting, and the skill challenges felt fair. Especially allowing perception (so everyone is at least trained) was a VAST improvement compared to the other 3-6 two-parter.
I played it in hightier and felt the combats more annoying rather than challanging. A big offender here was the Encounter B.
3.5 Stars -- Good Overall, But Significantly Disappointing in Key Aspects
Note: I actually would give this scenario 3.5 stars, but have rounded up to 4.
So, I don’t usually post lots of reviews, but felt compelled to post one for this. I played and ran this at PaizoCon. I prepped it before I played, and while there are many parts of the scenario I liked, there were a few design choices that I found significantly disappointing, to the point where they noticeably and negatively impact my playing experience (admittedly, some of that is probably because of my background in anthropology and archaeology).
I’ll get into why I reacted this way in a moment, but want to cover the good first.
Story-wise, the scenario is part of an overarching meta-plot, and I think works well in that respect. It’s an interesting story, and I’m excited to see where it goes. The combats are enjoyable. They’re not as easy as some other scenarios, like 1-06, but are not quite as hard as, say, 1-00. They’re a good middle ground that will be easier for more balanced parties and more difficult for parties that lack one or more key elements, such as front-line warriors, healers, or mages. When I played, it was with a 6-person party in high-tier that was very balanced. For us, combats were pretty straightforward. When I ran, it was a low-tier party that wasn't balanced, and lacked some critical roles. They succeeded, but had a tougher time of it, and in several battles had one or more members on the ground.
The non-combat parts were enjoyable, and provided time for some light roleplay. I appreciate, as always, that Paizo has increasingly made diverse arrays of skill checks integral to scenarios. I think it’s a good move, and encourages players to build more balanced characters and more balanced parties. It also provides some time for those players less interested in combat to shine.
All of this would, for me, put the scenario at a solid 4 stars. I’ve given it that, but only because we can’t do half-stars. I actually think this is a 3.5. When I first drafted this review, I had it at a 3. I had just played the scenario, and was really, really bothered by the issue I’m about to talk about. After GMing it, and on further reflection, I think 3.5 would be a bit fairer (that, or I’m really just a big softy—not sure which!). I’ve rounded it up to four. See the spoiler section below for more on this.
Spoiler Section of Review:
During the scenario, the players come upon two sites clearly associated with archaeology and/or heritage in the region: an “elephant graveyard” with signs of past trade and an iruxi monument preserved with impressive time magic. In both cases, if they players want their treasure bundles, they have to utterly destroy these sites. They’re not given any warning that this will happen (such as through checks that might alert them to the danger) or any choice in the matter, assuming they want their treasure bundles. They players, most of whom will be outsiders to the region, basically (unwittingly) wipe these heritage sites out for the sake of minor amounts of loot. When I played this scenario, this issue caused a fair bit of consternation in our party, and let to some debate and even a vote on how to proceed.
To me, this was disappointing and a bit disquieting. I realize, of course, that in some scenarios Pathfinders are basically tomb raiders. But even in those scenarios, we generally haven’t completely destroyed the area we’re investigating. Furthermore, it seems to me that Paizo has been moving away from situations where treasure and treasure bundles come from robbing graves and destroying sites. A good example of this would be Origins of the Open Road (1-00), where you get 4 treasure bundles simply from returning stolen documents to their rightful owners. So it felt really jarring that our PCs literally destroyed clearly interesting and clearly important sites without any chance to preserve them (or even know ahead of time that our actions would result in their destruction). It’s difficult to tell if this is supposed to be some kind of meta-commentary/deconstruction of how Pathfinders operate, or if it’s just poor design on the part of the designer. It’s particularly jarring because most of us are going to be outsiders, travelling through and destroying relics that belong to other people; in this case, they’re people (iruxi) that we’ve actually helped in other scenarios! I mean, in 1-09, you clear an iruxi observatory of hostile squatters! And that's not getting into the fact that this it seemed completely out-of-step with where the Society seems to be going. One whole faction—the Grand Archive—focuses on studying and preserving the past, and the only other faction that might consider destroying heritage in this way (Vigilant Seal) at least would be doing so to protect people from foul magic. That may not be convincing to some people (like me ^_~), but it makes for a far better case for the destruction of these sites than “I just want my treasure bundles.”
My issue here isn’t so much that Pathfinders end up literally destroying heritage sites, or for the presence of moral quandaries. It’s more that there seems to be little to no player agency in it, and the scenario seems clearly designed to incentivize their destruction in favor of treasure bundles. Despite being qualified explorers, we are given no checks to determine if the sites are in any way unstable. And even when we discover that they are unstable, after the first encounter at the “elephant graveyard”, we cannot actually prevent their destruction except by abandoning our treasure bundles. As I said, I could see that being intentional (if unartfully done), except that there’s no mention of this or the consequences of it in the conclusion, reporting notes, or success conditions!
I could easily see an alternative situation where we would have been faced with choosing the lesser of two evils: perhaps a choice between saving heritage and finding a bad guy more quickly. But these kinds of “hard choices” come out of situations fostered upon the players by the agency of others. The choices made here were entirely a result of the (in-game) agency and planning of the Pathfinder society and which, paradoxically, reduced the (out-of-game) agency of the players. It’s just…bizarre.
And because I don’t want to just critique without making suggestions for improvement, let me give an example of what I think could have been done. The first of these encounters is when the PCs find an “elephant graveyard” with evidence of historic, regional salt trading. The way the encounter runs now is that the PCs are given a chance to notice some quality salt blocks and take them. As they leave, the remains sink into the sand due to the PCs moving in and through the area.
An alternative way of handling this could involve a few things:
1. The PCs are told, at the very beginning of the adventure, that the society would be very interested to learn about any sites along the way, though PCs should be careful to not destroy them, as the society doesn’t want them lost and doesn’t want to make a bad impression on the locals.
2. When the PCs reach the site, they are given two choices: they can take time to investigate it (which might delay them) or they can just move through.
3. If they move through, they find the treasure bundles but destroy the site, as they did not take the time to investigate it and realize how fragile it was.
4. If they investigate, they realize that the site is highly fragile, and likely to be destroyed if they move directly through it. They can make skill checks to figure out a way to investigate without destroying the site. If they fail (or don’t want to try), they can move around it. Either way, it takes them extra time to get where they’re going, but they are given treasure bundles as rewards by the society for locating and preserving such a site.
5. When the PCs make it to Dafaka Outpost, if they’ve preserved the sites, they’re greeted neutrally or friendly. If they didn’t, word has already reached the town (the Society has been travelling “off-road”, so to speak, and so word of them has spread ahead of them) and the locals are unfriendly, imposing penalties on checks to find the final site.
6. PCs finding information about both sites grants them an additional secondary success, to offset the risk of losing out on the “get there in 10 days or less” success condition
This way, PCs get treasure no matter what, but you reward PCs for taking the time to be careful.
Obviously, this particular solution might not the best one, or might have issues, but that’s not really the point here. The point is that I don’t think PCs shouldn’t be in the position to be effectively forced into destroying heritage without any built-in mechanism in the scenario to give them some kind of agency. It seems to run afoul of both the direction the Society is going (in-game, with its increased emphasis on preservation, improving the Society’s name, and fixing its mistakes) as well as player agency.
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
