Starfinder Adventure: To Defy the Dragon

I'm really confused by the map on the back cover and what is in the book.

H6 on the map is H7 in the book
H7 on the map is H8 in the book
H8 on tha map is H9 in the book
H9 is H10
H10 is H11

Bottom floor is also screwed up

H1 on the map is H3 in the book
H4 on the map is H5 in the book

The rest I'm guessing. I don't see the kitchen described in the book and I have no idea what H5 on the map is. so those are probably matched up.

H3 on the Map I'm guessing is where H6 the memory vault is
H2 on the map I think is H1 in the book

The unmarked central hallway is probably H2 in the book. The 4 gargantuan creatures can start in the air so the room fits them all.

I've never seen a Paizo map get so screwed up. It's very disappointing I was thinking up to this point how well this module is written, and I was very excited to run it. But it appears some last minute editing/module cuts were not edited very well. Thus making the H maps and the non-existent K map a confusing mess to figure out - what is where.

Another error. Area H7 in the book(H6 on the map) lists guards but leaves out how many guards. My guess is 4.

Another error Pg. 47 lists a creature names Zavrix and type page 120 of Alien Achieve 3. The stats in the book don't match whats on page 450 of AA3. I have no idea what the creature is supposed to be. However pg. 120 of AA3 does have a Void Troll which seems like a good substitute.

What the hell happened to the high quality products that Paizo in known for?

Junker's Delight was a really well put together intro module but I feel like Locus-1 was kind of slapdash with an underwhelming finale.

Disappointed to hear about your experience with the rest of the Starfinder Adventures. Maybe AP's are better organized? It sounds like the adventures work best as idea mines.

Junker's Delight was a really well put together intro module but I feel like Locus-1 was kind of slapdash with an underwhelming finale.

Disappointed to hear about your experience with the rest of the Starfinder Adventures. Maybe AP's are better organized? It sounds like the adventures work best as idea mines.

The first 2 standalone adventures I thought were fine.

Red Rally was organized in a way that makes it extra difficult for the GM to organzied it and it seems the brain trust just simply forogt that a 7th level Operative with a standard build and ship bonuses will compeltly blow up the adventure. (by taking 10's on piloting rolls and making 80 stratigh pilotiong rolls by greater than 5).

To Defy the Dragon, it looks like there were last minute changes that created a word count crunch and whoever made the changes royally screwed up area H. (i've GM'ed hundreds of paizo products and have never seen anything this messed up).

More feedback on this scenario. First the overall story line is great. The players are just discovering the mechs and are excited about the mech element of the scenario.

There are some issues with this module however that don't have to do with the overall plot line.

First besides all the issues with every room in area H not matching what is in the book. (as mentioned in my post a few up from this one). There are other map errors in the mech bunker maps. The box text does not match the map. Area E1 is the most glaring example of this.

I would suggest skipping the starship combat at the start of the book all together. It pisses players off to completely obliterate the opponents without taking any damage to their ship and barely a scratch to their shields and play starship combat for an hour or more in actual time only to lose automatedly by box text. Auto losing a combat by Box text is really crappy thing to do to players. I've never seen this done before in a Paizo product.

I found another map error. Room G3 is flipped upside down from the other levels. The elevator does not align. I assume this was done due to the box text and room description saying there is a portal in the south side of the room. So flipping it upside down allows for the boxtext to be accurate but throws off the elevator to the other levels.

The more I think about it the more I am surprised about how many editing errors there are in this module. Most of them have to do with maps or stat blocks. it's really too bad. This was Paizo/Starfinders opportunity to show off their mech rules and the module gets screwed up due to over a dozen very obvious editing errors. I used to read those RPG superstar contest notes. What happened to all the Paizo precision based on those comments?

I would suggest skipping the starship combat at the start of the book all together. It pisses players off to completely obliterate the opponents without taking any damage to their ship and barely a scratch to their shields and play starship combat for an hour or more in actual time only to lose automatedly by box text. Auto losing a combat by Box text is really crappy thing to do to players. I've never seen this done before in a Paizo product.

Just eyeballing it, that starship combat did look underpowered to me. (I don't care how the stacking CR math supposedly works, Tier 5 foes are gnats fated to go squish on a Tier 10 ship's viewscreen.) But since you do want to establish the threat, I would go ahead and keep the encounter while upping the challenge. Also, if/when I run this, I'll be setting it during the Drift Crisis, so my penciled-in plan is to have the adventure kick off at the moment of the Drift Crash itself. The PCs' ship is slapped out of the Drift, into the planet's upper atmosphere, with feedback from the Crash causing their Drift engine to overload the ship's systems; thus the fight becomes a race to fend off the attackers before the PC's ship burns out its own electronics.

I also have some lingering questions about the history and population of the planet, but I'm willing to chalk that up to "situation more intricate than the adventure has room to explore."

roysier wrote:

I would suggest skipping the starship combat at the start of the book all together. It pisses players off to completely obliterate the opponents without taking any damage to their ship and barely a scratch to their shields and play starship combat for an hour or more in actual time only to lose automatedly by box text. Auto losing a combat by Box text is really crappy thing to do to players. I've never seen this done before in a Paizo product.

Just eyeballing it, that starship combat did look underpowered to me. (I don't care how the stacking CR math supposedly works, Tier 5 foes are gnats fated to go squish on a Tier 10 ship's viewscreen.) But since you do want to establish the threat, I would go ahead and keep the encounter while upping the challenge. Also, if/when I run this, I'll be setting it during the Drift Crisis, so my penciled-in plan is to have the adventure kick off at the moment of the Drift Crash itself. The PCs' ship is slapped out of the Drift, into the planet's upper atmosphere, with feedback from the Crash causing their Drift engine to overload the ship's systems; thus the fight becomes a race to fend off the attackers before the PC's ship burns out its own electronics.

I also have some lingering questions about the history and population of the planet, but I'm willing to chalk that up to "situation more intricate than the adventure has room to explore."

A good suggestion. It's hard for me to believe Paizo can't figure out a starship encounter tough enough to beat the players ship by using the actual game rules, and thus have to resort to a cheap shot boxtext defeat of the starship. This gets a big "Wow!!" when I tell other RPG players about this encounter.

I ALMOST blew up my party's starship once, but it was a cruiser, they were a destroyer, and they hadn't optimized it.

I'mma trying to start reviewing products again :'D

Y'all are too young if you hear "mechs" and think Power Rangers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rPSLQxMT8w

Oh, my sweet summer child...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlPX8-iTy4s

The lovely days of my childhood, having Luke Skywalker fight Mazinga (and later Godzilla).

I'm really confused by the map on the back cover and what is in the book.

H6 on the map is H7 in the book
H7 on the map is H8 in the book
H8 on tha map is H9 in the book
H9 is H10
H10 is H11

Bottom floor is also screwed up

H1 on the map is H3 in the book
H4 on the map is H5 in the book

The rest I'm guessing. I don't see the kitchen described in the book and I have no idea what H5 on the map is. so those are probably matched up.

H3 on the Map I'm guessing is where H6 the memory vault is
H2 on the map I think is H1 in the book

The unmarked central hallway is probably H2 in the book. The 4 gargantuan creatures can start in the air so the room fits them all.

I've never seen a Paizo map get so screwed up. It's very disappointing I was thinking up to this point how well this module is written, and I was very excited to run it. But it appears some last minute editing/module cuts were not edited very well. Thus making the H maps and the non-existent K map a confusing mess to figure out - what is where.

Thanks for this! My players are about to assault the spire and the descriptions made no sense when I was prepping. Your post helped confirm/complete my remappings. This whole ending seems rushed to the printer. My favorite is the lake on the second floor... Oh and the 140' wide "spire" has a 480' top floor. You see that after you puzzle out the "To K" stairs is actually the "To I" map, printed 15 pages prior! WE NEED ERRATA!!