Starfinder Society Scenario #3-01: Crash Down

- The procedure for scanning and mitigating the crash is pretty well done, but could have been better organized.
- The first major encounter for grabbing supplies is cool, but the rules are very nebulous. No indication what action or check is needed to find and grab supplies. Supply locations and locations for hull breaches and enemies are not clearly marked on the map. And the map itself lacks clarity -- players constantly got confused where doors were and thought some features were walls or other impassable terrain.
- PCs are not given a map or any resources to make meaningful choices about how to trek through the planet. It's just a railroad.
- There's little to no interaction with the strange fauna on the planet aside from a bullet list of roleplay things that have no effect on the game. Even most of the monsters don't have any special rules or abilities.
- Most of the combat encounters are boring. There's a river encounter that's pretty challenging, but the map is a poor choice as there's little terrain for the players to utilize.
- There's some interactions with alien technology that could have led to a neat encounter, but it ends up just being an exposition dump that leaves you wanting.
- The scenario ends with a subtle guilt-trip on the PCs for something that wasn't their fault.
- And then there's the magical storms, a mechanic that was clearly not well thought out or playtested.

The scenario spends several pages explaining rules for a mechanic involving the planet's trademark magical storms that complicate the PCs' survival. These storms are absolutely pointless.

For each day of the journey, you have to roll dice to determine whether or not a storm occurs, what hour of day it occurs with respect to the activities the PCs are performing at that time, how long the storm lasts, and what element the storm utilizes. Then for each hour, the PCs have to make saving throws or suffer damage and other effects.

When you do the math and read up on the rules, you quickly realize that ALL of this is absolutely pointless. Because PCs can regenerate HP and Stamina by resting, any damage dealt by the storms will be healed by the end of the day. So the storms only mean anything for days an encounter occurs. There's only two or three encounters and storms only happen once per day for no more than 3 hours. There's a 25% chance a storm doesn't happen at all. Thus, there's no more than a 9.375% chance a storm will happen during an encounter.

But environmental protections on armor protect PCs from the storms (as it should). A level 1 PC will have armor of level 1 or 2, granting 24 to 48 hours of protection. Because storms last no more than 3 hours each day, PCs can easily negate the effects of the storms for the entire journey assuming they intelligently utilize their armor charges. The only effects they can't shrug off are the penalties to ranged attacks and any difficult terrain.

Thus, the storms are absolutely pointless. They only mean anything on days where an encounter occurs. Even then, the PCs can negate almost all of the effects.

The scenario seems to expect you to waste an hour rolling for the storms each day and force each PC to roll up to 30 consecutive Fortitude or Reflex saves for damage and effects that will get healed anyway. Don't do this!

My advice for running this scenario is just pre-roll the storms and have them only come into play during encounters or if a PC has a drone or animal companion without environmental protection.