Pathfinder Society Scenario #2-04: Path of Kings

4.60/5 (based on 12 ratings)

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A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 3-6.

The Pathfinders sail across the Arcadian Ocean, hoping to establish a new lodge on the continent of Arcadia. Following the course laid out centuries before by the Linnorm Kings, the PCs hope to arrive at the legendary Ulfen settlement of Valenhall. What they find when they arrive is a scene quite different than what they were led to expect, and the Pathfinders must deal with a number of factions, both Ulfen and Arcadian, if they hope to succeed in their mission.

Written by: Luis Loza

Scenario tags: Horizon Hunters

[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]

The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:

Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:

Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop

Note: This product is part of the Pathfinder Society Scenario Subscription.

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4.60/5 (based on 12 ratings)

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good mix of mechanics and combats. great story

4/5

From a Story and writing style perspective, I really enjoyed this scenario. I think it did a good job of exploring a new area for the Society and did so in an engaging way.

Balance wise, it did OK. I ran this twice at low-subtier with 3 PC’s+Pregen and the monsters really didn’t stand a chance against the group composition I had both times. In both games I hardly dealt any damage to the PCs the entire game which I feel made it feel more “story mode” difficulty than any actual threat. I don’t mind that, but I just hope they had fun too.

Overall though, it was a good mix of mechanics and combats. Story kept it fun and engaging and I think the tables enjoyed the experience.


The best season 2 adventure for now

5/5

The scenario has a nice story and (in lowtier) solidly balanced combat encounters. Do more adventures like this.


More Arcadia please

5/5

I greatly enjoyed this run. Arcadia is uncharted territory as a setting, and this really delivers on making me interested in what's going on there.

I do feel that one of the skill challenges was a bit rote (the negotiations), but I really appreciated the characterization of the parties involved. The last of the freeform sections my party tackled may have been the best though.

Spoiler:

The party's bard walking across the ice singing along while jumping clear of collapsing areas... that was great to watch. I love that you have a negotiation section with hazards like this.

The final encounter I am unsure of - the enemy mix for a party of 4 level 3s is possibly nasty for some compositions. We had a reasonably balanced group of fighter, rogue, witch, and bard. But the difficulty of this encounter is potentially very swingy based on a single question of party composition.

Spoiler:

How much fire do you have? I had no fire spells prepped on my witch (in retrospect, I can't recall if the topic of "trolls" had come up, and I left myself with a default spread of electric arc and telekinetic projectile). The scenario provides a fair amount of fire and acid weapons for the three troll type enemies, but this party only had one person proficient in them, since rogues and bards aren't proficient in martial weapons by default.

On the other hand? Once the fighter started lobbing the bombs (at point blank!), the enemies started dying fast thanks to their very high weakness value making the splash devastating to them.

If the fighter had gotten hit more though, we might have been in real trouble, since I'm not sure anyone else could have reliably avoiding critical misses on the bombs. As is he did go down once, but the enemies missed a lot too.


Great cultural introduction

5/5

I ran this at high tier.

This scenario largely delivers on its hook: The party gets to go to a new continent and see what's there. The focus of the adventure is thus on a cultural introduction to this new land: players get to find out who lives there (ethnographically), what their economy is like, a bit about the local and regional government, the threats these people face, and their beliefs/understanding about an Avistani legend. Despite this focus, the combat encounters still manage to throw in some variety/twists, and the PCs get a teaser of a broader mystery/lore in this area.

Luis Loza's descriptive writing is strong-- the GM gets enough to key off of for characters and action sequences-- but I think the scenario lacks imagery for the physical environment. The PCs get to visit several locations in and around a town and interact with various people, but there isn't a lot of description for what these locations *look like*. What is the architectural style, beyond being related to the Avistani culture present here? What is the terrain and wildlife like? Other than the cover art, what is the style of clothing? Given that the party is going to a *new continent*, the scenario is short on new artwork. Maybe that can be chalked up to the pandemic, as I've seen reference to freelancers having to pull out.

There are a few editing problems, but they concern flavor, not grammar or mechanics: a character's ethnicity changes, and a plot of land magically shifts location. But overall, I strongly recommend this adventure for those who want a sense of cultural exploration.


Great new adventure

5/5

I have played this at high tier and run it at low. It is a great adventure, highly recommend it. I do find the premise a little strained, "we sail off into the west hoping to hit a continent at a relevant spot" but apart from that the rest is excellent.

There is a strong mix of combat, exploration and roleplayiing involved. The fights are potentially challenging, we played at 30+ CP and the final encounter had a lot going on which was thoroughly enjoyable.

The possible conflict with the drunken guard looks like it could go very hard but at least it can be avoided. The negotiation of the land dispute forcing the party to split up feels a bit forced with no real convncing reason given for it.

Once thing I have noticed which seems to be a very backwards step is that the text of the scenario no longer tells us what counts as a treasure bundle. We have numbers linked to locations at the back but with no explanation of what counts. This creates the potential for confusion and given we have seen more than one scenario now with missing treasure bundles this doesnt seem like a good change. Please put what counts as a treasure bundle back into the treasure bit at the end of each section along with the table at the end of the scenario.


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Paizo Employee Webstore Coordinator

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Announced for September! Product image and description are not final and may be subject to change.

Contributor

7 people marked this as a favorite.

Arcadia! :o

Dark Archive

Isn't that 1e valkyrie picture?

I mean yeah placeholder I know, but I'm trying to remember which picture that was

Silver Crusade

That is indeed the P1 Valkyrie.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I like the new art! Very excited.

Silver Crusade

Oooo, me too

Scarab Sages Designer

9 people marked this as a favorite.
Sasha Laranoa Harving wrote:
I like the new art! Very excited.

Rahaksenwe will be one of the very last new characters I got to add to the PFS continuum as its line lead, and I'm super happy about how her art turned out, too! Especially since she's part of establishing how big Arcadia is; there's a reason she doesn't have the same garb as some of the other depictions of Arcadian residents we've seen, and that reason is that it's a huge continent with lots of diverse cultures. We'll get to meet a couple of them in this adventure, and hopefully that'll open the door to meet even more down the road :)

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Michael Sayre wrote:
Sasha Laranoa Harving wrote:
I like the new art! Very excited.
Rahaksenwe will be one of the very last new characters I got to add to the PFS continuum as its line lead, and I'm super happy about how her art turned out, too! Especially since she's part of establishing how big Arcadia is; there's a reason she doesn't have the same garb as some of the other depictions of Arcadian residents we've seen, and that reason is that it's a huge continent with lots of diverse cultures. We'll get to meet a couple of them in this adventure, and hopefully that'll open the door to meet even more down the road :)

Any other scenarios we should play before this one, Michael?

Scarab Sages Designer

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Anorak wrote:
Michael Sayre wrote:
Sasha Laranoa Harving wrote:
I like the new art! Very excited.
Rahaksenwe will be one of the very last new characters I got to add to the PFS continuum as its line lead, and I'm super happy about how her art turned out, too! Especially since she's part of establishing how big Arcadia is; there's a reason she doesn't have the same garb as some of the other depictions of Arcadian residents we've seen, and that reason is that it's a huge continent with lots of diverse cultures. We'll get to meet a couple of them in this adventure, and hopefully that'll open the door to meet even more down the road :)

Any other scenarios we should play before this one, Michael?

It won't hurt to have played the following adventures just for some background, but you don't need to have played anything to enjoy this one!

Pathfinder First Edition- 10-19: Corpses in Kalsgard

Quest #3: Grehunde's Gorget

Scenario 1-10: Tarnbreaker's Trail

Minor Plot Spoilers:

Corpses in Kalsgard is set against the backdrop of Sveinn Blood-Eagle sailing off to Valenhall; experiencing that can add some context to his presence in this scenario.

Grehunde's Gorget introduces the PCs to the idea that not all linnorm kings survive the journey and helps add to the sense of scope and danger in this adventure.

Tarnbreaker' Trail is a direct follow-up to the events of Grehunde's Gorget and has parallel themes of the Ulfen culture interacting with the Indigenous cultures they share territory with.

Dark Archive

I'm kinda confused about map of arcadia on where the locations are located and scale of it.

Like the way I interpret the map is that players apparently travel half of northern edge of continent inland? But that can't be right :p

Radiant Oath

The addition of a separate pdf with the map is great, but please when doing maps in future content have the borders be on the sides of the squares. Having fractions of squares on a map makes importing them into some VTT programs a lot more work, as you need to shave off those extra pieces first to line up the grid.

Dark Archive

Shave them off? I just use alt and move maps to right spot on the grid. The maps don't actually need to perfectly align with the grid

Radiant Oath

CorvusMask wrote:
Shave them off? I just use alt and move maps to right spot on the grid. The maps don't actually need to perfectly align with the grid

Yes they do, because a map of any significant size with just a few pixels off will cause exponentially bigger errors the further out it goes from the square you use as your baseline. It took a significant amount of time to align some of the Extinction Curse maps properly because for some reason the squares around the edges weren't squares, they were inexplicably longer than they were wide, and this map similarly has boxes around the edge that aren't square. Importing Flip-Map pdfs (which have perfectly aligned borders) is super easy, because you can just set the image size to (squares X 50px) and then set your square size in the VTT to 50px, a process that takes less than a minute.

It's not like I'm making some insane request, I'm asking that maps be as big as the amount of squares they require, no more or less. My assumption is that it's just something that hadn't occurred to anyone involved in the process, because it certainly never occurred to me until I was preparing games in VTT. If it is actually way more work than I expect they'll likely ignore the request, but there's no harm raising the issue.

Dark Archive

? I'm still confused since I haven't hard that much problem with aligning maps with roll20 squares, besides the maps in old modules which have multiple squares that aren't symmetrical with other squares(aka haev one line of squares slightly less wide than other squares)

Dark Archive

Played high teir, GMed low tier.

Slight tweaks to ease final encounter:
That last fight is brutal for the ill equipped and ill prepared causing a number of TPKs at recent con. Current Fire Oracle meta excluded.

1. Rewards from one of the build missions helps a lot, but the shield reward from the end could help the low tier groups - any chance of moving that to the reward for Sveinn's mission? How about getting it on the chronicle sheet?

2. Prep time:- When I played we were thrown straight into a fight and were unable to establish any kind of battle line so were swiftly overwhelmed and died. When running I gave the PCs to set up as the box text does give plenty of time for the players before the encounter starts. 1 fighter tank knockout and the high level "tank" down to 3hp; felt down to the wire. If that 2nd tank died they would have been overwhelmed / suffered a lot more casualties. - instruct GMs time to allow players to prep? (Plus it'd be nice to give a snare crafter time to deploy a trap or two before combat.)

Scarab Sages

Evilgm wrote:
The addition of a separate pdf with the map is great, but please when doing maps in future content have the borders be on the sides of the squares. Having fractions of squares on a map makes importing them into some VTT programs a lot more work, as you need to shave off those extra pieces first to line up the grid.

I have had this issue as well.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Society Subscriber

I gotta say, I loved this scenario. It has the right mix of social and combat, though there's not a lot for skill monkeys beyond the socials.

I also noticed that the rewards after the boss fight did not make the Chronicle Sheet. Was this intentional?

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