A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 1st- through 4th-level characters.
A recently inducted Pathfinder field agent makes a startling discovery as pleas for assistance flock to the Society’s Grand Lodge from across the Inner Sea. A group of Pathfinders come to assist in parsing the ongoing damage to the Society when a staunch ally requests their assistance. Stepping into a problem close to home, the agents quickly uncover a larger plot set to tear the Society apart and that it’s up to them to raise the alarm!
Intro: Year of Shattered Sanctuaries is the introduction to the ongoing story of the Year of Shattered Sanctuaries. It is also the first scenario in a four-part arc detailing the events taking place in and around the Society's headquarters at the Grand Lodge in Absalom, the City of Lost Omens. Other arcs explore other locations across the Inner Sea. While the arcs can be played in any order, it is recommended that players experience the scenarios within each individual arc in order, and this scenario is a natural starting point for the Year 3 metaplot as a whole.
Scenario is fine, does it’s job well which is ‘introduce the metaplot of the rest of the season while still giving players something fun to do.’ Not the best or most in aging scenario, but far from the worst. Would give it four stars however:
There is one fight that only happens at the upper tier that is just notorious. Multiple high-level monsters with an ability to deal auto damage, auto apply debuff, and it essentially heals them for no resource cost. So you can hit these things and on their turn they will just hurt you, undo all the damage you did, and be able to do that ad nausium. Maybe a group of 6 level 4s could handle them easy, but for several groups it has almost caused a TPK. And their defense is higher than normal, just an unfun fight that feels only one step better than saying ‘rocks fall, everyone dies’
Looses a star for such atrocious encounter design, especially since these are unique monsters that have been specifically designed for this scenario.
Imo a repeatable scenario should not have a part which becomes stale after 2 playthroughs, but alas reading the letters in the beginning quickly becomes a chore both for players and GMs, leaves new players completely in the dark, and it's just not fun.
The RP part is very odd as it feels like it could easily be excluded. Thankfully, once things get going it becomes much better although lack of encounter options for GM to choose from makes it very predictable on following playthroughs.
Overall, this is very similar to 1-23 which suffers from similar problems.
The Worst PFS Scenario That I Have Ever Played/GMed
I will try to avoid spoilers, but this scenario was seriously the worst PFS scenario that I have every had the misfortune to play and GM. The story only made sense for GMs who could see the full backstory written at the beginning of the scenario, there were multiple quest givers in the scenario as well (which is a personal pet-peeve of mine, “Here’s your mission – now go to point B where you can talk to quest-giver B about the mission too!”), the fights were all strung together in a massive unsatisfying railroad with very little indication that they are even connected, and the big bads of the season are portrayed as a bunch of complete idiots who decide to leave tons of incriminating evidence behind so the party can finally see some connection between the season opener and the rest of the season to come by the conclusion.
Worst of all, when I GMed this scenario myself, we had a brand new player who had been to a session or two before then and seemed excited about Society. He was quickly overwhelmed by this scenario though, and the deluge of confusing and seemingly disconnected information that is data dumped on the party at the beginning of the adventure left him completely lost and confused. I honestly felt much the same way when I was playing the scenario, and I’ve been playing Society for 9 years.
In sum, this scenario expects way too much trust from players to be a good intro for a season. I personally, as well as my players, felt that we were floundering for 4+ hours – and that is not something I wish to feel ever again. If this scenario is an indication of things to come this season, I am no longer excited about Season 3 (which is unfortunate, because I was excited when I first heard about the concept).
I've run this scenario 7 times and I still love it. You get to meet three new(*), excellent allies. The method of introducing this season's metaplot is clever and engaging. And the combats are diverse and interesting. Any one of those would have made this a good scenario, but all three in one adventure is remarkable.
This is one of my top 5 favorite PF2 scenarios. Great job to Mr. Kimmel and everyone involved!
The special this year was the pathfinder/starfinder specials affecting each other they mentioned in blog. They apparently don't plan to tie in specials with metaplots anymore
(which is great in my opinion, I STILL don't know what happened to Aram Zey in the end because its "special spoilers" :p Tying the metaplot with convention only stuff kinda sucks when you can't go to every convention)
If possible, can editors avoid using colors like red/green to denote items on maps? As a colorblind person I have a really hard time making out certain red items on page 13.
Is this scenario really repeatable? It's the same creatures in each encounter with no variation. Usually replayables have several creatures to choose from for each encounter so that it is different each time you play it.
The final encounter does not list number of baddies at the base level. I am referring to the number in parenthesis that I expect to tell me how many initial.
