A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 5th- through 8th-level characters.
The simple mission is: deliver a letter. However, upon entering into the magical hedge maze to do so, the Pathfinders find that two of their sticky-fingered friends have arrived at the same time and intend to hide a powerful elemental artifact within the Maze of the Open Road! This completely realigns the keystones of the maze, leading to planar interruptions and wild disruptions to operations. It's up to the Pathfinders to realign the keystones, calm down an angry genie, and help everyone who's been misplaced along the way! (And just maybe get that letter delivered!)
Written by Caryn DiMarco
Scenario tags: None
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
This scenario takes the PCs on a quick tour across parts of the elemental planes in order to get themselves and their allies back home safely. I appreciated the attempt to showcase a variety of encounter-types and not just have this be six fights with different elemental-flavors. The presence and role of three of the NPCs involved - two other Pathfinder agents and an ifrit they may have dealt with before - was also nice: it's good both to see other Pathifnders and their own jobs going along in parallel to our own missions, as well as having a 'local guide' for one of the planes to highlight its unique beauty.
Unfortunately, trying to squeeze all the elemental planes together into a single scenario is too much. Especially now that there are 6 rather than 4 there wasn't enough time to really absorb any of the inividual plane's quirks or what made them special. Instead each was just another leg to quickly pass through to reach the next step. I did at least appreciate that even if the presentations of the Planes felt a bit lackluster, the descriptions of how the other Planes' incursions onto them was throwing things awry were well done and evocative
Fitting all six planes in and giving them each their own sets of obstacles also seems to have led to an unusually high amount of editing issues. Two of the encounters are confusing to understand how they are meant to be run as written, while a third the final encounter seems to not include an option that many parties would want to try to take.
Encounters:
Event 2 - the Fire Plane chase - appears to actually be written as a modified chase where the PCs automatically advance each round regardless of their rolls, but at the end their total successes and failures affect the outcome. I have no problem with this - it's my prefered chase system honestly - but this interpretation of the Development/Success conditions seem to contradict both the Chase rules desrcibed before the chase (which call out the default Chase rules in the GM Guide) and the scaling adjustments noted on the same page (whihc are meaningless if the Devleopment section is accurate and intended since each obstacle is overcome regardless).
Event 3 - the Earth Plane hazard - seems to be you use sonics to free the keystone, with Consonite Needles possibly hurting you as you approach it to try. But since the Sap doesn't actually do anything its odd to have it fully statted as a Hazard (just says the skill check the PCs need to make), the Needles hazard's description seems less than clear (it mentions it can trigger again, but is that for everyone who approaches, or on each separate attempt to dam the water flow?) and laying out the skill check to dam the water and break the keystone free both in the Sap Hazard is odd (since as written both action need to be done, but the actions themselves are taken 15+ feet away from each other). It can be parsed, but as laid out on the page took me a frustratingly long time to envision how it was supposed to work.
Final encounter - to avoid a very tough! fight you need to talk the jann down. (quite a bit: four total successes across two round with only Diplomacy as a listed option. Even creatively allowing for some other possible options (I let a PC's Legal Lore be used as they argued that the Society should not be held fully accountable for thieves' commitment of the further crime of trespassing on our property for example) that is putting a lot of expectations on parties who may only have one or two even passable diplomats. But the bigger issue is that even if they calm the jann you then need even more checks to get the theives to give back their loot? the same theives who caused all of this, almost killed a Pathfinder (if your party wasn't around Idrix the kobold would drown as his water breathing runs out), and literally begin their interactions with the PCs by asking for their help in saving them from the Jann? My party calmed Shurrizih but almost failed at this last needed check to get the thieves to give his stolen property back. Which as written would mean they would have needed to fight the jann until wither he or them died, all so that the two NPCs most of the party hated would be able to get away learning nothing. The fact this last check exists/there is not a path to turning Yeyacha and Gedun over to the jann feels like an oversight: my party and looking at the other reviews, several others as well found them to be a criminal nuisance that the scenario seems to assume we should take responsibility for without doing the work to justify why Also with the last encounter: had we fought, the high-end of low tier swaps out air elementals with water ones. On a map where the only non-air place to put these large non-flying creatures would completely cut off the 10-foot-wdie paths, and them being out of water Slows them, this seems a case where scalaing just chose an existing one-level-higher monster to include without thinking of how it would work in the context.
I also noted above that three of the NPCs were good inclusions. The other two - the titular thieves - very much less so. The scenario seems to want them to come across as charming 'Robin Hood' types, but other than a sentence or two does not really do the work to make that work. Even the item they stole is left unnamed - its nature and how specifically it could be used to possibly help others is left undefined. What's left then is the PCs seeing a pair of non-Pathfinders trespass, destabilize our place, endanger others, and draw the wrath of a powerful genie onto us...and then try to shrug their shoulders at the whole ordeal and walk away learning nothing. My party took an immediate dislike to them one player being ready to attack them from the moment he saw two randos mucking with the Maze with another Pathfinder yelling at them to stop - a not entirely unjustified reaction and the fact the scenario lacks an option to have them actually suffer any consequence for their crimes beyond Valsin just giving them a 'don't do that again' warning at the worst seems a sign the devs may be overestimating the appeal of these new characters.
Overall the scenario ran in practice better than I feared when reading it, but it still ended up more of a 'sequence of things that happened' than a compelling story. The combination of too many planes giving each short shrift and the emotional element being tied to NPCs whose fate the players did not care about combined to make this a passable scenario but not one I am likely to soon revisit.
The thieves are unlikeable, the lengths you have to go to protect them are obscene, and your reward for collecting all the MacGuffins that help you resolve things diplomatically is for those benefits to NOT STACK and for you to have to get a total of four successes over two rounds in a skill that at most only 2 of the random strangers playing with you today are going to be trained in. Failing that, you have to fight the equivalent of a dragon with infinite Breath Weapons over a bottomless pit, and even low tier players will have to fight the high tier version of him if there are too many players. This is the worst scenario I've ever played.
I loved this scenario, the different locales and chase vibe were great. I appreciated having different things to do between the planes, and I felt like the whole party had a chance to shine.
This one has three combat encounters, skill challenge, on top of at least five smaller roleplaying or skill encounters. There is basically too much content for 4-6 hour scenario to run in reasonable amount of time. As elemental romp it could be fun if split into multiple sessions, but that would mean running it outside of pfs rules. I can see players being really angry at duo over the mess though, which seems like intended outcome tbh. Though its honestly too presumptuous to assume players are automatically like "yeah, screw the rich" because scenario doesn't really convince you that the target really deserved it either, so lot of people would likely side with the law.
A fun scenario, but it had several things I had to work out myself. I enjoyed running the "chase" scene, but wish it was clearer that it didn't truly follow the chase rules (like how they added the sidebar for underwater combat). Editing missed several typos too. All of the challenges were on the GM side. The DCs and monster stats for the upper tier seemed low for my players as they easily handled most skill checks and combats. We finished in 4 hours, just barely peacefully resolving the last encounter. Despite the difficulties on my end, my table had fun and I wish I could play this one!
Pretty unenjoyable adventure - we spent the entire adventure pursuing a particular course of action only to have it invalidated by a single failed skill roll upon meeting the BBEG, precipitating an unwinnable fight and TPK.
We need urgent clarification on how this section of the scenario is supposed to work!
Spoiler:
In the plane of Fire there's supposed to be a chase scene where we run away from the plane trying to kill us. However, the end of the section says "If the party gets at least 3 chase points per PC..." which is not how Chases work. If you want the party to make different skill checks every round, and see how many points they got at the end, use the standard Victory Point system. If you want a chase scene, there needs to be something to chase, or something to run from.
In this case, there should be the "wave of fire" behind the party which advances one obstacle per round. If the fire ever reaches the party they should take damage (with a Basic Reflex of course), and be forced forward one obstacle. This way, if they roll well at the start they can get very far ahead and have extra time if they get stuck. It also limits the time of the encounter by having the party auto advance if the fire hits them, and gives a penalty if they're failing. You can have Farah carry any unconscious PCs so they don't die, that way a series of bad rolls doesn't make it a TPK half way through the scenario.
That's the biggest issue with scenario mechanics. Other issues exist, but they don't break the scenario and confuse GMs like this one.
