A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 5th- through 8th-level characters.
It's time for a trip to the Grand Bazaar of Absalom! This thriving market hosts wondrous shops of all sorts, whose proprietors are experts in a variety of wares. Having recently acquired a vast number of strange magic items, the Pathfinder Society needs groups of agents to visit the Grand Bazaar and exchange favors with these interesting shopkeepers in order to better understand some of the treasures that have fallen into the Society's hands. Thankfully, the Society's new ally, Biglock, has a good idea of where to start!
Written by Kendra Leigh Speedling
Scenario tags: Repeatable
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
A thoroughly enjoyable (and actually repeatable!) PFS2 scenario.
There is enough variance that there is actually replayability to this module. The different tasks and combats fill the time without feeling repetitious.
Combat creature type:
Spoiler:
One of the combats was against a creature type that some player builds may struggle against, as almost all of the damage is negated. Those players will feel very dissatisfied, and that fight in the market will take a lot longer because of it.
Mindscape encounter:
Spoiler:
This encounter required some GM prep to smooth out, and referencing the Dark Archives book can help.
The NPCs and encounters felt flavorful without dragging on, and left plenty of room for GM RP to riff on the theme of the encounter.
Wondrous is a skill check scenario with some combat.
Wondrous is a repeatable and I really like how they made it repeatable if I were to play it again.
Out of the 4 artifacts we identified, I found that only one of those missions had a good story or good lore. One mission was extremely boring (long series of skill checks). The other two were OK.
”Combat”:
Yes the Barbazu almost killed my PC at subtier 5-6, with the bleed that is very difficult to stop and it stops healing. GMs don’t really know how to adjudicate it or communicate your options.
Barbazu isn’t a scenario problem, the creature is probably not rated correctly.
Wondrous is not particularly memorable… which is a good thing for a repeatable... right?
Overall: A fun excursion that you will probably forget in a week. (7/10)
Played at 34 CP with 5 level 8's and a level 7. All references will assume party level of 8. Party comp was skewed heavily toward martials, so GM intentional chose more combat heavy encounters. Table went almost 6 hours before the GM called the last encounter.
-First part went fine. Standard number of successes to meet threshold. We also had a lot of high skilled characters, so bit of a cakewalk
-Second part was a reasonable combat. 3 enemies at level-1 and 2 enemies at level-3.
-Third part was more skill checks, this time with primary and secondary checks. Went fine with our investigator picking up a lot of the slack.
-Fourth Part was 5 enemies at level-2 and one at level+1, featuring a lot of battlefield control spells. This fight felt like a slog with half the party trying to overcome two stacked control spells for the first 3 or so turns of combat. This was was just dragged out far too long, and I'd rather have seen fewer, more difficult enemies.
-Ending enter felt really disconnected from the whole story, and at approaching the 6 more mark, the GM just called it after it was obvious we'd win.
Conceptually, I liked the core part of the story. Investigating items and meeting relevant NPC's feels great for a Pathfinder Society repeatable, definitely more so than a diplomatic mission. My gripes lay with the ambush encounter tacked on at the end and the adjustments. As levels get higher and creatures and characters get more and more complex, I'd say that I'd almost always recommend difficulty rather than headcount. I know this will eat page space, but I think it makes more sense than just a lot more bodies.
In my opinion, this scenario is not to bad, but I didnt run . So far I've only run it once in high tier (23) with quests 1-4 and we got through fine (just over 4 hours). There are enough options to add some variety to the players and the combat has been okay. Not really demanding, but not a walk on a Sunday evening either. There's also some sensible role-playing interactions, which made for a nicely entertaining evening for my group. However, I have to admit that everything has somehow been there before, you hardly get to know any new aspects of Pathfinder 2 here. I think if you reduce the role-playing part as a group, you only have boring dice-pushing.
The story ties into the Season 4 metaplot absolutely fantastically without having a metaplot feature of its own. I already like that very much. However, it is advisable to have the volume "The Great Bazaar" and to prepare a little with it. So you can create a really nice game night for 4 to 5 hours. I'm going to make myself some tea now and bake cookies. 4 stars (sovereign, but nothing outstanding), you play yourself
Organized Play Coordinator
