A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 5-8.
Nigel Aldain has had a long and turbulent history with the Pathfinder Society, largely tied to his role as the curator of the Blakros Museum. Recent events have led the Blakros family to begin to doubt Nigel's fitness for the role, and the Pathfinders have been hired as an independent consultant to investigate Nigel directly. As the tangled threads of hidden plots begin to unravel, the PCs will have to determine who is truly a friend, and who is a foe in friendly guise.
Written by: Charlie Brooks
Scenario tags: Grand Archive
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
Oki, so I review the version with map and cp adjustments fixed, though i notice that the higher tier version of final encounter is much harder than lower tier version because:
:
Lower tier is two nightmares focusing on damaging one relic per turn. Higher tier is 3 nightmares focusing on destroying two relics each. There are six relics in total and players need to prevent four from being destroyed. With four player party its really hard to beat nightmares in action economy, in my party's case they did some good grappling and only reason why the nightmares didn't destroy four relics on second turn is that they barely had enough movement because they had to fly over the characters in entry way. But yeah three out of six artifacts got destroyed and I think I could have destroyed easily if I had gotten more lucky with escape the grapple rolls(or if I had them always try to escape grapple first rather than mixing it up with trying to attack grappler as well), I think higher tier should either have three nightmares each targeting one relic or two more stronger nightmares targeting two each to be fair.
Besides that the earlier non-lethal encounter in scenario is also incredibly difficult, though at least its balanced out by it being incapable of killing characters. It does highlight a problem I have with pathfinder 2e PFS creatures often: they tend to have overall too high stats. The creatures in first encounter have both high ac for their level and their saves are two high saves and one moderate save. Meanwhile the creature of same level from bestiary that appears later has high ac and two moderate saves and one weak one.
It might not sound like much, but it did make the athletics optimized monk feel frustrated that he needed to consistently roll incredibly high just to grapple the foes in first encounter :p I'm saying that if creature has high ac, it shouldn't also have 2/3 high saves because it makes using maneuvers really hard as well.
But yeah to the plot related stuff: I like how this scenario both works if you know about previous blakros scenarios and if you don't. Though I do think it could tell bit more information about Onyx Alliance's recent events so that if gm hasn't played daughter's due and doesn't know about new leader's reforms they have bit easier time keeping up with the twist.
We had fun with it but has some structural problems
My group happened to be in the area and at the right level, plus seemed open for a session more heavy on smoozing so we gave this a try.
Overall, the players seemed to have a good time and I had fun with the concept and settings. I found the color info and the main NPCs fun.
It does seem to me that the challenge rating adjustments for level 7-8 are wrong (they are the same as for the level 5-6), but it didn't matter at our level and it is easy enough to adjust if it did (we aren't doing PFS formal play.)
The players seemed to like the influence system (we have used it before but though they are quite experienced it hasn't clicked with them all that well).
The main issue I have with this, and one that would give me heartburn as ref if I was doing this formally for PSG is that my players did a fine job with the NPCs, developed perfectly reasonable suspicions and based on those suspicions avoided the final encounter. Personally, I can't blame them, I would have done the same.
Trying not to include any spoilers but basically, they were successful at working the NPCs and based on that, did not choose to go down a path which would have triggered the final combat.
Since this scenario has a very limited number of combats, that could be a problem for some groups although my players were happy with the session and I consider their solution successful.
I think the session would have been better with either a better way to trigger the final encounter that did not count on the players either failing at the influence interaction or being foolish if they succeeded at the influence system (or the referee railroading the players regardless). I can think of a few ways to do that but in the end, this filled an evening without the extra combat, the players had a good time, so we're happy with it.
Very confusing plot. We need to chose a stance for something we have no information about. (Support the onyx alliance)For someone who is so incompetent. They don't talk about what happen 2 scenario ago. It should know a scenario from pfs 1 to understand more about this. Which i shouldn't need to.
Enjoyable story but weak mechanics, terrible editing
I have played this at high tier with 34 Challenge Points and I am part way through preparing it. The story is an interesting one, it opens up a bunch of background information about the museum and Nigel and the structure makes sense. It is well put together BUT there are some significant issue.
The editing of this is really very poor. One of the maps provided is the wrong side of the flip mat. The elite template is inaccurately applied to one of the enemies. The CP scaling for encounter 1 in the high tier uses low tier CP values. It uses the influence subsytem but Nigel has no perception DC for discovery despite perception being the default skill and the chronicle has an item priced at 20gp which should cost 228gp.
The combat encounters felt really very weak for our group although we did have 2 rogues, a fighter, bard, cleric and oracle. As the oracle I ussed all of about 4 spell slots the entire game. Nothing felt terribly threatening.
The influence encounters were intereting and pushed us into using up a bunch of hero points. There seemed to be a decent spread of useful skills which was helpful.
Overall I enjoyed the story but found some of the mechanical aspects rather weak and the editing very poor. For the story this would have been a 4 star review, for the implementation it is 3, the editing errors drop it to 2. I also disliked the retcon for Nigel, it felt rather hamfisted and similar to the after the fact justifications for Torch in Passing the Torch.
Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Map list not yet available.
Y'know, I'm gonna go dust off my museum map just in case. ;)
Seriously though, I've been waiting for Blakros something ever since The Daughter's Due. For all the "Oh God not this place again" that this scenario will inevitably receive...I'm actually pretty jazzed for this one.
Charlie Brooks
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
3 people marked this as a favorite.
The Blakros Museum was incredibly fun to write about. I really hope folks enjoy this one.
After 10+ years the Blackros' are finally questioning Nigel?
I feel sad since the scenario where the party can vote to blame Nigel as incompetent it REALLY isn't his fault that time xD
True, but his years of incompetence and blaming others kinda led to it. I just have to wonder how much of my personal headcanon this is going to rewrite.
you just have opportunity to learn WHY they keep renovating the museum over and over xP I do like this retcon though (assuming it is retcon, hard to tell with serialized story telling), though I'm worried that maybe veteran players are too bloodthirsty considering they all seem kinda mean to Nigel whenever I've seen them play Blakros scenarios xD
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
The map in the scenario is definitely wrong, yes. Prepping it to run online this weekend, I'm needing to find or make a similarly themed map to replace it with, because the image provided is actually unusable without changing the encounter more than substituting another map would.
There are also some incomplete statblocks. I don't dislike the adventure, but it seems like a lot slipped through the cracks.
Thanks for finding issues, folks. I've made corrections, and we will reupload shortly.
Corrections log:
*Fixed runestone price/level to standard
*Fixed Elite template application on nightmare for high level range
*Fixed CP scaling in first encounter of high level range to list high level ranges.
*added number of spells to spontaneous casters (the standard, same as # listed)
*added missing checkbox to treasure bundle list
*added perception to Nigel's discovery skills (DC 2 higher than Arcana)
*blowgun damage normalized (technically NPCs don't have to do the same damage as PCs with weapons, though we generally try to have them do so)
*Map for Area B (added in previous revision)
On sidenote, I feel bit annoyed when I feel like pointing out to players who make reviews that they should read the scenario themselves first before reviewing it, since sometimes their issue is that gm forgot the part where it says that npc explains the information from background section of scenario ^_^; Like yeah, this is latest in Blakros scenarios which continue plotline of Blakros scenarios from 1e, but I remember background section actually explaining basics of it. But then again perhaps I shouldn't comment before rereading it since I do have perspective of few 1e scenarios(I never played all Blakros ones but I did play ones that explain OA)
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