Pathfinder Adventure Path #190: The Choosing (Stolen Fate 1 of 3)

3.70/5 (based on 9 ratings)
Pathfinder Adventure Path #190: The Choosing (Stolen Fate 1 of 3)
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A vision of a strange shop in the Grand Bazaar of Absalom accompanies the unexpected arrival of powerful magic cards that mysteriously manifest in the possession of a band of adventurers. But when an investigation of this vision reveals murder, treachery, and fiendish machinations, the adventurers are thrown into a race to control the very future of all things to come, tied to the ubiquitous fortune-telling cards known as the Harrow! Who has chosen your characters for this deadly quest, and what might become of your destinies should you fail?

The Choosing is a Pathfinder adventure for four 11th-level characters. This adventure begins the Stolen Fate Adventure Path, a three-part monthly campaign in which a group of adventurers race against time to gather the scattered parts of a powerful deck of magical fortune-telling cards. This adventure also includes a detailed look at a brand new demiplane tied to the Harrow deck, new rules options to explore these magical cards, and several new monsters ready to test your characters' mettle!

Each monthly full-color softcover Pathfinder Adventure Path volume contains an in-depth adventure scenario, stats for several new monsters, and support articles meant to give Game Masters additional material to expand their campaign. Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes use the Open Game License and work with both the Pathfinder RPG and the world’s oldest fantasy RPG.

Written by: Ron Lundeen

ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-511-3

The Stolen Fate Adventure Path is sanctioned for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure Path and Chronicle Sheets are available as a free download (774 KB PDF).

Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:

Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop
Foundry Virtual Tabletop
Pathfinder Nexus on Demiplane
Roll20 Virtual Tabletop
Archives of Nethys

Note: This product is part of the Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscription.

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This product is non-mint. Refunds are not available for non-mint products. The standard version of this product can be found here.

Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at store@paizo.com.

PZO90190


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5/5


2/5

Impressions before running the adventure which may still take several months to get to. Consider it a WIP review

Background. There was a lot of inconsistencies trying to explain the factions and the characters. The Band of Blades faction was not mentioned in the campaign background and only dropped in Chapter 1 without context. It was a very frustrating experience to ctrl+f throughout the .pdf, going back and forth to piece together what the heck is going on.

Chapter 1. I like the idea of the investigation, but do not like the influence subsystem at all. It seems to grind gameplay to a halt, and I hate systems that feel like rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice and this was one of them. It makes little narrative sense to halt all progress and action for conversational dice rolls where you could potentially spend hours or days harassing three NPC's for information you need. I probably would go with a node-based design to obtain the three clues needed to solve the mystery.

Chapter 2. I love the idea of portal fantasies like Kingdom Hearts and Tsubasa Chronicles where you get sent to different worlds, it is peak adventure. However, in many of the Harrowing Realm adventures it feels like the players are participating in very minor parts to larger narratives. I hated reading "this is beyond the scope of this adventure", or some quests even invalidating the players' efforts like certain NPC's not needing the key that the players were sent to retrieve. I also disliked how the adventures do not reflect the deeper meaning of the Harrow cards, some being only superficially related to the card’s imagery. Too many things are hand-waved for my liking, especially with how willing some NPC’s part with the Harrow Cards that saved their lives.

I love the concept of the adventure path, but I feel like I may have to majorly rip this apart to get something more cohesive and have more narrative significance.

Chapter 3. There is a pretty significant NPC where their fate is left up to the GM and PCs without any suggestions on what role they could serve in assisting the PCs if they remain an ally. Despite being a pretty significant character, they're completely dropped never to be seen in the next two books. The final encounter feels strange, as the boss hasn't been very much directly involved nor do any of the other NPC's talk about him much. The build up seems to come almost exclusively in background note for the GM, with very little, if at all, present in the actual content the players will see.




5/5




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Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Email customer service, they do not monitor the boards for customer service requests

The Exchange

Erin Harris 235 wrote:
I'm very confused... I ordered this product in PDF form but it is not in my downloads... anywhere?

was resolved. thank you customer service team, and/or who ever told them for me XD

Liberty's Edge

CorvusMask wrote:
If outer planes still work on alignment basis though, I don't see why harrow would remove them since makes sense to me that fortune telling implement would be based on the cosmic forces

Indeed. Hell cards for the LE cards and so on. Likely how the cards are known in setting too since the people on Golarion likely do not know of any Alignment thing but they know of Hell, Heaven, the Abyss ...

Paizo Employee Creative Director

2 people marked this as a favorite.
The Raven Black wrote:
CorvusMask wrote:
If outer planes still work on alignment basis though, I don't see why harrow would remove them since makes sense to me that fortune telling implement would be based on the cosmic forces
Indeed. Hell cards for the LE cards and so on. Likely how the cards are known in setting too since the people on Golarion likely do not know of any Alignment thing but they know of Hell, Heaven, the Abyss ...

That's one potential way to go, but Hell and Nirvana and the Boneyard are much more evocative and flavorful concepts and words than, say, "lawful evil" or whatever, which would make the cards associated with them feel like they should reflect that. It'd be weird for not all the "Heaven" cards to look like their art and concepts are associated with heaven. AKA: Renaming them to match the outer planes is a bit too spicy.


Ok. Im really enjoying reading this and can't wait to run it but I have a question. I get the one Pathfinder Society reference but is there any significance to the scenario that is name-dropped in chapter 3.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

4 people marked this as a favorite.
MadScientistWorking wrote:
Ok. Im really enjoying reading this and can't wait to run it but I have a question. I get the one Pathfinder Society reference but is there any significance to the scenario that is name-dropped in chapter 3.

There's a significant NPC in that chapter who played a very important role several years back in Pathfinder Society, but apart from setting up where that NPC is today in the context of this adventure (both mentally and physically), that scenario doesn't have a lot of tie-in to Stolen Fate. At least, not intentionally.


James Jacobs wrote:
MadScientistWorking wrote:
Ok. Im really enjoying reading this and can't wait to run it but I have a question. I get the one Pathfinder Society reference but is there any significance to the scenario that is name-dropped in chapter 3.
There's a significant NPC in that chapter who played a very important role several years back in Pathfinder Society, but apart from setting up where that NPC is today in the context of this adventure (both mentally and physically), that scenario doesn't have a lot of tie-in to Stolen Fate. At least, not intentionally.

That one I entirely got and is very thematically relevant. It also brought back the happy memories of me getting back into Pathfinder again after a break.

I was more referring to the
Spoiler:
King of the Storval Stairs/Queen of the Storval Stairs
reference. Which funnily enough also brought back pleasant memories for a different reason.

Ooo one last thing but amazing job incorporating the Grand Bazaar. You included one of my favorite NPCs to appear in 2e

Spoiler:
Clemeth


Random question that I'll spoiler just in case.

Spoiler:
In 1e Uniilas were incorporeal, and now in 2e that seems to not be the case. Is this a retcon, correcting an error in 1e, or an error with 2e?

Exo-Guardians

Any word on when the Foundry module will be out?


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Time traveler wrote:
Any word on when the Foundry module will be out?

It is already out and linked on the above product

Paizo Employee Creative Director

1 person marked this as a favorite.
SOLDIER-1st wrote:

Random question that I'll spoiler just in case.

Spoiler:
In 1e Uniilas were incorporeal, and now in 2e that seems to not be the case. Is this a retcon, correcting an error in 1e, or an error with 2e?

This is a correction to a conceptual mis-step from 1st edition.

Spoiler:
The imagery of the uniila, combined with the fact that they fight with weapons, makes it illogical for them to be incorporeal, so I cut that from them as a correction to the creature's design. They've got enough going on to make them interesting without adding complexity to how they can wield weapons and confusion with their art.


James Jacobs wrote:
SOLDIER-1st wrote:

Random question that I'll spoiler just in case.

** spoiler omitted **

This is a correction to a conceptual mis-step from 1st edition.

** spoiler omitted **

Awesome, thanks so much!


2 people marked this as a favorite.
silversarcasm wrote:
Time traveler wrote:
Any word on when the Foundry module will be out?
It is already out and linked on the above product

It is not linked alongside other partners such as "Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop" and "Archives of Nethys" though which is where many people look to see where adventures are supported.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
redeux wrote:
silversarcasm wrote:
Time traveler wrote:
Any word on when the Foundry module will be out?
It is already out and linked on the above product
It is not linked alongside other partners such as "Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop" and "Archives of Nethys" though which is where many people look to see where adventures are supported.

It's not linked there because those are external links. It's literally linked immediately below, like every other Foundry module, because those are on the internal shop.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Cori Marie wrote:
redeux wrote:
silversarcasm wrote:
Time traveler wrote:
Any word on when the Foundry module will be out?
It is already out and linked on the above product
It is not linked alongside other partners such as "Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop" and "Archives of Nethys" though which is where many people look to see where adventures are supported.
It's not linked there because those are external links. It's literally linked immediately below, like every other Foundry module, because those are on the internal shop.

The section reads "This product is also available on the following platforms" and Foundry Virtual tabletop is another platform.

And no, not every other foundry module. Outlaws listed FVTT in this section, and part of Bloodlords did as well but it seems whomever is doing the tagging hasn't been keeping up with it.

We can say that, yes, the foundry product is linked as a note directly under the section but this is much less visible and misleading for FVTT to not be listed under "available on the following platforms."

Anyway, not my job to tell paizo how to sell their products but this is confusing more users than just time traveler, to share just one example.


I don't normally post much, but having a new player sign up for my Stolen Fate game starting next month, it was brought to my attention. The Stolen Fate Players guide states -

"Lump Sum: This method grants a lump sum of 4,500 gp to each PC to spend as they wish on any common items of level 10 or less..."

When Lump Sum for level 11 is 3200gp and for level 12 is 4500gp.

Just wanted to point this out to everyone that may not have known or overlooked this typo as I did :)

Grand Lodge

Could you update this page to include the Foundry modules for the Stolen Fate AP? I've been waiting for them for months, only to discover that they've been out for a while. They also don't show up in the list of Foundry modules on Paizo.com. I had to go to the Paizo page on Foundry's website to find them.

https://foundryvtt.com/creators/paizo/


1 person marked this as a favorite.
keftiu wrote:
Barachiel Shina wrote:

Oh this would have been nice to run for my players...

If only we had a PF1e Version of this...

Shame. As usual.

At what point does one stop beating the dead horse?

PF2 launched four years ago, and has been doing quite well for itself. Paizo's been nothing but honest about how unfeasible straddling multiple rulesets is for their team. PF1 got a decade of content, more than any one table can ever hope to see all of - so why do this? Being publicly bitter and spiteful won't change the realities of their staffing or the interests of their writers, it just looks unflattering.

If the AP sounds interesting, buy it. If you don't want to convert it - something people do for both editions of Pathfinder and every other RPGs all the time - then don't. It's really that simple.

Your statement is completely invalid due to Paizo launching a 5th Edition conversion of Abomination Vaults...they promoted their RIVALS as opposed to converting that AP to PF1e to sell to actual Paizo customers and PF fans. Make it make sense.

Grand Lodge

2 people marked this as a favorite.

The 5E market is larger than the PF1E market, thus they will make the costs back instead of taking a loss.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Yeah I don't play either P1 or 5e but if I had to pick as a publisher... I'd go with the one making money.

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Also worth pointing out that the 5E Abomination Vaults has been repeatedly delayed so that's not a priority for them to get out either. They're also making new books every month for Paizo and Pathfinder fans.

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