A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 1-4.
Dacilane Academy, located near the Grand Lodge, is a storied institution that sees to the education of many children of Pathfinders. However, the academy’s benefactor, J Dacilane, has recently heard rumors from his students of seven strange phenomena manifesting on campus. Despite his doubts that these are simply the imaginings of students raised on Pathfinder tales, J has called in a favor with the Pathfinder Society to investigate—both to put his students’ minds at ease and for the good learning opportunity a Society report about the school would provide. But are there more to these urban legends than meets the eye?
Written by: Rigby Bendele
Scenario tags: None
Maps: None
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The scenario has a great story and very funny death-possums but it highly demanding the specific party's composition.
Small parties without knowledgeable characters (especially on low-tier) are doomed to fail and martial-oriented (as well as conversation-oriented) characters may feel frustration on the stretch of investigation.
I have run and played this at high tier. Overall the story is interesting, the challenges varied and the mystery an interesting one which you gradually uncover.
It does have one or two editing issues around the empty hallway which isnt terribly clear and it presents the worlds deadliest ever Oppossums. This does run very short, neither game took more than about 2.5 hours.
a nice story, good writing, challenging but balanced, not too many skill checks and smartly arranged.
only caveat, probably difficult to run for many less experienced GMs, as very open when it comes to players' choices and decisions.
I GMed a high sub-tier table for a group of six players on Roll20.
The good: Cool romp through a (possibly haunted?) school that offers multiple thematic options, with a mix of combat and skill challenges. Not perfect, but quite good.
I also didn't find any grammatical or editing problems whatsoever, which is rare for a PFS scenario.
The bad: Charisma focused "face" characters won't have much to do. Some of the treasure bundles also felt a bit forced.
The ugly:
Spoiler:
One of the encounters can pit up to six (!) creatures against the party in a 20x10 area. Even though said creatures can move through enemy spaces, this just won't run smoothly. Making the area 20x15 would have worked much, much better.
Folks, I removed a bunch of posts and replies. The scenario is still in development, and I feel that both debating why a NPC is using different pronouns, before the scenario has even been released, coupled with the accusatory tone of the posts in here are not helpful for this product's discussion thread. The developer has clarified that the pronoun's he/him are correct. If you have feedback for how this has been communicated, you are welcome to email community@paizo.com and we can forward your comments onto the appropriate folks.
The change of the NPC's pronouns have been addressed with James' comment and my mod comment. The product discussion can go forward without additional commentary. Please note that posts can be removed for reasons other than breaking a particular guideline. Part of moderation includes helping encourage a thread to not hyperfocus on a topic that has already had posts removed so that the thread and posters have an opportunity to move the thread forward.
I am super excited about this scenario! I really like the J. Dacilane storyline in PFS1, and I can't wait to see what Rigby has done with the next chapter of his story!
I absolutely love school of Spirits and have run it a fair number of times, it absolutely is a classic, though to be honest I only ran Black Water since it is the setup for it.
This is an NPC I was looking forward to seeing again, though we will see if the scenario includes the things I was hoping for.
Is there a specific time on the west coast that the PDFs get released? I received an email that my order of this Society adventure comes out today, but it is not showing up in my Downloads. I keep checking to see if it gets added, but so far (1:00 PM Central time), nothing. Just me?
Maybe I'm misremembering, but wasn't Junia "J" Dacilane a girl?
Following up on this question now that the scenario has been released, there is some minor referencing in the text...
Spoiler:
According to the background material, "...his work with the Pathfinder Society came to the attention of the Eagle Knights and he quickly transitioned from awkward young lady to a handsome captain.
There is also, "If it weren’t for the Society rescuing me as a girl, I don’t think I’d be the man I am today!"
As far as I can tell, that is the only information in the text in response to your question.
So I've noticed the last few scenarios I've purchased -- including this one -- appear to no longer allow the extraction of images. I can see why this might have been done, but for transparency's sake, I'd like to know whether this was a deliberate change.
A song composed during the encounter in the shack in the back
** spoiler omitted **
Err, just to note, the gm didn't remember that those creatures don't attack party on sight as they are being on the defensive side? xD Or is that part of the bard's exaggeration? :D
Heh, it's more the first person who went in rolled a nat 1 to identify on a secret check, and while we all were pretty sure that's what had happened, we leaned into it, only to realize we bit off more than we could chew when a crit landed for like, 27 pts of damage :D
