A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 5-8.
The Starfinder Society has contracts with numerous organizations, but none are perhaps as well known as the Society's ongoing association with undead media mogul known as Zo!. It's that time when the Society must fulfill its end of the contract, this time by dispatching a team of skilled agents to perform impressive combat feats for a new spin-off show: Live Adventure Extreme!
Written by: Scott D. Young
Scenario tags: Repeatable, Starship
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
I enjoyed the scenario, except for the fights not feeling balanced for their timing. Each main fight was balanced to be completed on its own (going through all of my soldier's stamina), but being immediately thrown into the next fight did not feel balanced.
From a GM prep perspective- this was super easy, barely an inconvenience.
And if you're a player who's just leveled up and really wants to try out your build in some challenging combats? You could do a lot worse then to play this.
But it really suffers from being pure combat. Zo! stuff has normally been really diverse, with a mix of skill challenges, combats and meta humour. This was...kind of a slog, especially when you could drop one or even both of the Encore combats in order to put in some actual...adventure.
This is the play opinion of the scenario. This will be edited should I ever run the scenario to update from the GM perspective.
Much like the other scenarios on this type of setting, the adventure attempts to accomplish what would be more a module length series of events in the compressed timeframe of a scenario.
Even with a solid team, solid tactics, and the low tier, we were pressed to the very edge of consumables and other party resources to the point that it looked exceptionally grim for our table.
This was not helped by a shift from normal combat to Space Combat and then back.
Much like other reviewers, the lack of skill contests was a bit jarring, and the nearly constant grind of combat was off-putting for a team of space explorers.
Unlike some other offerings in Season Two and Three, this scenario runs very long, and it seems it would probably require a disciplinarian GM that did NOT encourage/actively discouraged roleplay to get the scenario done on time.
Mechanics:
The Starfinders are given 24 hours they have to work for ZO! on his new adventure. Yet despite this, they aren't given eight hours during that time to recover resources, so it instead becomes 'The Longest Adventuring Day' especially towards the last combats when everything has already been used.
Most other scenarios actively encourage resting (or at least remain silent on it) to allow parties that feel overtaxed to regroup and recharge. Not so for this scenario, and it's painfully telling as time goes on.
Depending on the hazards encountered during the scenario they are either laughably bad or downright dangerous to the point that it becomes nearly impossible to accomplish scenario goals.
At certain points, it almost felt like the tactics and behaviours of the NPCs and the scenario setting were devised to attack certain optimised builds (which thankfully our party was lacking, or it would have been a TPK, more than likely).
If this is true, it's a dangerous and slippery slope to start tailoring fights and encounters to 'this optimized bunch that playtested the thing'. Having seen that sort of mentality in a couple of living campaigns was what led me to stop playing in them, because everything was overtooled for 'the ultimate power combos' and the 'average' player had no hope of competing.
I want to give this thing more stars -- it's clear that the author and the development team did a lot of work on this scenario but it also felt very punishing after other scenarios.
Whether that's because of the sudden leap in difficulty in the 5-8 tiers and trying to balance them or a lack of experience in balancing same difficulty is hard to determine without GMing this.
Yeah, it's an evergreen in a sweet level range, and the combats are pretty good combats, and at a challenging pace. I liked them.
But I'm really missing some theatrical RP encounters in between. Where are the interviews, weird commercials and whatnot? This could have been much better with a few skill challenges and a bit fewer combats.
The starship combat in particular just wasn't that interesting, and could easily have been cut to free up an hour for RP/skill challenges.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
I just played Live Exploration Extreme last week, so looking forward to this one, even though Wazasha shot my character down pretty hard when he tried to get a date with her.
Looks like I have until October or so to get that character up to 5th level.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
Is there a page missing?
spoiler:
In the low tier Match One Encore, if you roll 5-6 then the players fight pterosaurs, but there is no page in the appendix with the stats and box text.
I have the pterosaur stats from Alien Archive 2 and I can make up color commentary if I need to, so I really only need to know how many of these things the players are supposed to face.
I'm guessing it must be 4 because that's how many CR 3 creatures it takes to make a CR 7 encounter.
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Dracomicron wrote:
I'd like to report that the starship combat is not bad at all and we finished in like three rounds
Do you mind if I ask how the rest of this scenario was?
Some concerns:
I'm trying not to be overly negative about a scenario I haven't run/played yet, but I've read through this one, and... I mean, is there anything else to this one but "Combat! Ship combat! Combat again! OK go home!" at all? Near as I can tell there is zero story or plot to this. It's a backdrop to trot out some monsters that don't get used a lot, and nothing else. There are literally not even any ramifications to the society; the debriefing is just Naiaj saying "Hey good work, thanks."
I get that not every mission a Starfinder takes is going to involve an amazing discovery, and sometimes you gotta make those credits, but... really, this is such a plotless scenario at first glance that I'm wondering "why bother?" I guess I could use it to help teach the combat system to new players, but as a 5-8 scenario I have to imagine my players are going to be severely unimpressed by this. After anime mecha fights at a SMC concert and epic tales of survival after starship crashes, this feels so hollow.
Honestly what the interest of this kind of Module ?
Concerns:
I have never seen a mod bad like that for Starfinder Society, and it's really the winner and what to avoid to do. And I must say that I am very concern because usually most of module are good and you have almost a story behind, and I like the character Zo! and I have fun in the previous Modules 1-09 and 2-01.
This one is Repetable but I never going to play again this mod after this first time, zero interest and no fun. Too long, to much fight and only that, it's a mod who going to disgust a bunch of players for sure, particulary those who have play previous mods with Zo. Try to play an envoy in this mod, and after the middle of the first combat you cannot help anymore the team, your skills and capacities are not usefull anyway in the mod because we have no social stuff in it.
We can make module focus on combat, but almsot it's must be fun, and playable by all kind of class. It's not the case of this one, nad he have no interest only for those who want make combats and only that.
Very disappointing compared to 1-09: Live Exploration Extreme
Spoiler:
When I hear "adventure", I'm thinking a trek into the jungles of Castrovel or the dodging space pirates while mapping blackened waters of the Diaspora. The last thing I expected was gladiatorial combat in arenas.
Live Exploration Extreme was great because your party was going into the unknown. The reality show filming, live audience, and private interviews with the ghast assistant producer were a perfect compliment to what would otherwise be a normal Starfinder adventure.
I ran this today for the first of two sessions I'll be running (second is tomorrow), with a party of 4 Operatives and a Mystic. Based on that, it took nearly 7 hours to finish the entire scenario (encounter 1 bogged them down and took approximately 3 hours to finish).
scenario feedback:
Marking the encores as optional, or giving a random chance for there to be no encores could help cut down on run time. I did warn the players this one could run long, after my reading and prep work, but they wanted to complete it, in spite of it going long.
I ran this today for the first of two sessions I'll be running (second is tomorrow), with a party of 4 Operatives and a Mystic. Based on that, it took nearly 7 hours to finish the entire scenario (encounter 1 bogged them down and took approximately 3 hours to finish).
** spoiler omitted **
Altering my comment a bit after running this a second time today.
scenario feedback:
The session I ran first was played at high level, but had 2 players using Level 5 characters. Between the arena effects and the combat being more difficult for them, as well as having had a party of 4 Operatives (Operative 5, Operative 5, Operative 6 / Biohacker 2, Operative 8) and a Mystic (Mystic 8), it caused the 3 hour 1st encounter of 5. I ran the scenario for the second time today with a party that had a better mix of classes (Mystic 7, Operative 5, Mystic 7, Envoy 1 / Soldier 6, Envoy 7 / Soldier 1), and it was finished in just over 5 hours. Though I do believe making the encores either optional or have the encore rolls have the possibility of not including an encore would be beneficial in keeping it to the time in which a scenario should run), I also fully realize the 7 hours was caused partly from the party mix and the need to add and create effects in the VTT that may not have already existed, combined with the complexity of the scenario.
I also had one player in the session on the 26th ask (in character) if the Starfinder Society was now condoning the murder of sentient beings, having signed up the PCs to participate in a competition that did not require the use of nonlethal damage the way the final encounter in 2-01 Pact World Warriors did. They also mused, out of character, about what this may mean for the Society and its reputation.
