A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 1-4.
An important leader in the Veskarium approaches the Starfinder Society to explore a mysterious magical portal that suddenly activated on the frigid world of Vesk-8. Travelling through the portal, the PCs quickly find themselves in over their heads and needing to find a way back to civilization.
Content in Frozen Ambitions is an ongoing series of adventures set in the Year of Exploration's Edge. These lower-level adventures are the perfect starting point for any new Starfinder character, and can be integrated into almost any ongoing campaign with little extra effort. While it is encouraged to begin with this adventure, the adventures in the Frozen Ambitions series can be played in any order.
That has a CR 3 SWARM!!!! I am a experienced player in starfinder and even in the first attack of the swarm there not at level one! We had three operative! the only area weapon we have is at level 2! And there no item to fight it!
I was thinking too naively that i did not need to prepare against everything in a "novice" adventure! This is the last time i have faith on what his written. I am extremely disapointed of this. I hope the author will learn to at least to prepare novice players when it is a uncommon monster.
I have to agree with Flites assessment. This scenario's swarm was insane. Way too hard. We had no way to deal with it as a 1st level characters. We barely survived and by barely I mean, we had to use all our potions, the 1 grenade our party had. EVERY SINGLE PLAYER dropped at least once in that encounter. It was way way way too hard.
Honestly, I didn't like the story myself. It was boring. Like oh hey go check out this thing. Then its oh by the way youre trapped now... at level 1 this is insane. If you don't have proper preperation, a character will die becuase their armor looses energy to keep them alive.so its just crazy hard.
While the story is interesting enough, and 3 of the 4 social NPCs are interesting, the encounters are wholly inappropriate for a 1-4 scenario, especially in the 1-2 tier. Let alone for something advertised as a good scenario for beginners.
Spoiler:
A CR 3, fine swarm has *no* place in something that was designed to be played by a party of 4 brand new PCs or pregens. Even assuming they had grenades or spells, 40 hp means that the party has to somehow deal 28 damage. That just isn't reasonable.
Then a CR *6* encounter? Against 2 creatures that are closer to CR 5 than CR 4? With confusion, in a tight space?
No, even with the Deus ex Machina rescue, that was completely unreasonable. And a Deus Ex as someones first experience of organized play is a sure fire way to ensure they feel like their character is useless, non viable, and never come back.
And none of this even begins to address the failure to commit to the realities of
Spoiler:
environmental hazards. If you are going to stick people in situations where they activate their environmental protections, then you cannot include descriptive elements that cannot penetrate enviromental protections!
I am highly disappointed in Paizo and the Organized play team.
The second consecutive trip to the Veskarium in a row and much like the previous one, the Vesk look foolish and uninteresting by virtue of how they are portrayed in the opening segment of this one.
I also found that the plot structure is positively riddled with areas in which the PCs can be very easily driven off-course through no fault of their own. Environments that players will be tempted to interact with lack definition and leave the GM forced to play train conductor on a rube-goldberg line.
The lore reveals were interesting but the overall plot of the episode and the moral choice the players face are bizarre and not in any way engaging. The players were left in a morass of "I guess" when faced with the information presented in a reversal of the campaigns great strength in the first two seasons.
Throw in an unusually deadly nothing of an encounter and some of the least memorable NPCs in the campaign and you're left with a rare dud.
The Adventure is fun and interesting but has problems for New Characters.
Spoiler:
1. A swarm in low tier is a big problem when the scenario itself doesn't give a solution.
2. The Damage in the Fog can easily Kill a 1 Level Character if GM rolls high or the Players don't succeed in navigating it immediately
3. The Endboss is challenging (which is Okay) but can down a level 1 Char in 1-2 Hits and its KAC/EAC is too high for 1-2 Lvl Chars
TL/DR Fun Scenario but don't play it with low-tier Characters
Run this scenario today and realized I'm currently unable to report it since its not on reporting form yet. So uh, yeah, hopefully that gets fixed soon since I want to report scenarios as soon as possible