A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 3–6 (subtiers 3–4 and 5–6).
On an idyllic island of the western coast of Garund, the PCs arrive at the iruxi city of Ekkeshikaar. Seeking to establish new trade relations between the lizardfolk of Ekkeshikaar and the people of Vidrian, the Pathfinder Society must navigate a delicate political landscape while thwarting the efforts of nefarious forces who seek to stop the proposed alliance by any means necessary.
Written by: Alex Riggs
Scenario tags: Repeatable
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
Our table really enjoyed the [REDACTED] encounter. You don't even fully TPK if you all die, so I'm not sure why everyone is so worried about their characters having some level of risk in a 3-6.
It is on the same level of 1-04 Bandits of Immenwood, and I think that high DCs can be quite feelbad, but it's certainly something you can overcome.
I was very excited for the follow up to 1-09, Star-Crossed Voyages. The story was engaging and the NPC's were interesting with diverse encounters.
However, the design of some of the encounters make this unplayable as written at high tier. One encounter required some very lucky saves to avoid a TPK; the final social encounter had so many required checks at such high DC's that even with multiple characters optimized for social checks getting decent but not great rolls and Hero Points littering the table, we were not close to success. I've never played or run a table that resulted in zero Fame, until this one.
I'm not sure how this survived playtesting. The fixes for high tier seem straightforward: for the combat, change two of the creatures to different but similar-themed ones, and for the social challenge change the DC's to 5th level (20) instead of 6th (22), and/or don't require all PC's to make checks for every challenge.
As written, though, I would recommend that no one play this at high tier.
Good job writing a terrible scenario where one of your own allies basically screws you over and you end up a statue. I didn't enjoy playing my character anyways. Now time for some Statuefinder Society, YAY!!!!
My main problem with the scenario are the skill challenges. Forcing everybody to roll on a very limited amount of skill against high DCs and then expecting 4 successes from a 6 player party is just bad. The DC is high enough that even just being trained means you have a more than 50% chance to fail, and being untrained means you are basically fishing for 20s. Apparently the author or the developer expect every PC to be expert in the 2 to 3 skills that get used over and over again. This isn‘t the first time they did this and I get sick an tired of this. You can‘t just use the average DC from the table and then epect more than half of the players to succeed.
Another critique is the first encounter. Letting the party fight 5 monsters with gaze attacks that can petrify them is just a joke. This just turns into „everybody rolls so often until you fail“. And of course the monsters start near enough to the party that PCs are affected in round 1 before they even could act.
The only good thing is the story and the setting, but this scenario really gets dragged down by the bad mechanics, that apparently weren‘t tested properly.
The setup for the scenario seems to be a fine follow-up to the earlier iruxi scenario, BUT…
The number of enemies is completely out of line with what PCs can reasonably save against (hightier with adjustments). This was the worst developed encounter I ever played since the catastrophe that is 3 Seugathis or 8 mummies in PF1. This encounter design is prone to TPKs, unfun to play and even the incapacitation trait ONLY matters for level 6 players. While this would make a fine balancing for a encounter for a group of only level 6 players this makes it completely unfun to play but also WILL lead to one or more players going AFK for quite some time.
I hope whoever is responsible for this NEVER writes/develops anything again, this is BAD design. (and similar encounters were already very hated/criticized in earlier scenarios so there is no excuse of “trying something new”)
This encounter alone is responsible for a 1star review.
The scenario is also a fail regarding being a repayable as there is not a lot of variance in it (and especially with the story of the first encounter being that illogical that it breaks all suspensions of disbelief…). This was one of the worst experiences I had in 6 Years of organized play… Congratulations on topping “gems” like SFS 2-02 or PF 8-05 or PF2 1-16/1-17 in a negative way. The final skillchallange is too overtuned and mathematically stacked against the PCs. This all contributes to this being the worst replayable currently offered in all of organized play. (4 out of 6 in skills where you realistically need to be expert to have a chance to meet the DC 22. NEVER EVER do something like that again where every check is a skill where there is a chance to not be trained in)
The second encounter showed a lot of potential, but the number of effects cause a bit of confusion at the table.
By far the funniest encounter was the optional, as it had a great RP-setup. (If not for the MASSIVE problems with the first encounter it.
I guess this is continuation to star crossed journey? :O
Correct. While they're not strictly a two-parter in that you don't have to play one before the other, they are part of the same world events and Star-Crossed Court will give folks opportunities to leverage the boons from Voyages.
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I'm hoping its a 3-6 or even as 5-8, most of the people I GM for are already into the 5-6 range with their characters who played Star-Crossed Voyages and will be pushing 7 by the time this gets released. its also marked as a repeatable? Is that correct? Seems a little odd to have a 'unofficial part 2' as a repeatable following a non-repeatable, but if its how we get a higher tier repeatable, cool!
I have noticed that this scenario, being a level 3-6, still has the Repeatable tag on it. Is this going to be a higher level repeatable?
Yes, this is correctly labeled as a repeatable adventure.
It may have the label of being a repeatable but the content has very little actualy repeatable elements to it.
Yes, I read your review. The reality of the earlier repeatable adventures we've done this season is that while they're great for creating a lot of variety in experiences, they're not something that fits well within the world dynamics we're currently dealing with. Scenarios like Lost on the Spirit Road are intensely time-consuming to dev and difficult to fit within our production budget due to generally requiring significantly more word count than a standard scenario. Given that we're in a time of world-wide pandemic and civil unrest where none of us are able to work alongside each other and freelancers have been forced to bow out of projects, request extensions on their turnovers, etc., due to COVID-related issues or other struggles, we chose to go with a different repeatable model here rather than deprive the audience of a 3-6 repeatable.
Our goals with this adventure were to provide a variable route to success on an adventure that could collect data via the issuance of Chronicle sheets well into the coming season and allow players to continue shaping the campaign as a result. While it may not be structured as the kind of repeatable you would prefer, it is exactly what we asked the freelancer for to fit within the production dynamics we're currently working with.
Allowing players to experience multiple social resolutions was the goal here, creating an opportunity to be diplomatic, sneaky, inventive, or a combination of the three within a relatively static framework designed to showcase an ancestry that will likely continue to play a role in the stories we tell for years to come.
I think the assumption is that Kess is going to be petrified first round and Lashweather probably is of high enough level that the enemies really won't harm him in any meaningful way.
One thing I desperately want to ask is, why was the ritual circle not marked in detail? I have no clue which constellation is supposed to be which. Going to end up just saying the outer four are the summon ones.
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In the Observation tower, I picked which constellations most closely matched the descriptions and then randomized the rest while wondering why they were so different from the descriptions. We adapted, improvised and overcame.
Something else that seems to be missing; what to report for degrees of success. If the negotiation goes one way, check box A, another way, check box B, etc. From the responses above, it would seem that Paizo would want to know what degree of success or failure the players incurred.
Organized Play Developer
