Pathfinder Society Scenario #5-14: Poisonous Council

I was warned ahead of time to cut aggressively for this scenario, and I'm glad I took that advice. It wasn't great opening the book to see I had two-thirds of a page to read to my players...

I summarized the introductory briefing, cut the first combat completely, and only had the players run the influence encounter, telling them that the NPC would be looking into the other one. The herbalists' bandit problem worked pretty well as written, though the dungeon after that I was to present my players wasn't getting done in 40 minutes. Just send them towards the BBEG; it's pretty safe to combine the encounters after a round or two.

To echo everyone else, the NPCs themselves were quite vibrant and interesting to me, making it all the more disappointing that I had to speedrun most of their interactions. I want the briefing NPCs to come back in another adventure, and I want to see the NPC in charge in Daggermark interacting with the Society. Because strangely, none of those fairly crucial NPCs got a visual asset, while a random assassin gets to take up the front cover. Not sure what happened with the AD on this one.

I played this game in high tier.

PFS2 5-14 Poisonous Council is an adventure for 3rd to 6th-level characters set in the city of Daggermark, a River Kingdom settlement famous for its assassins. Written by Society veteran Tineke Bolleman, the story sees a group of Pathfinder agents attempt to create inroads with the Poisoner's Guild of Daggermark in order to secure alchemical supplies to produce antidotes at scale to keep Pathfinder Society agents safe.

Poisonous Council is a straightforward concept with a lot of room for exploration and roleplay. Toward the beginning, the scenario seems to promise intrigue and politicking as you must meet with Tragshi the Herbalist using clandestine means. Unfortunately, what mystery the scenario promised rapidly dissolves like iocaine powder in wine into a mess of weak mechanics and unrealized set pieces.

This scenario uses both the Influence and Infiltration subsystems, meaning that this scenario is not for everyone. Influence scenes are always a contentious topic as they tend to heavily gamify otherwise roleplay-heavy scenes, and can run long even when the GM is trying to keep things moving. Our GM did a good job organizing the information for us, but we still took around 1.5 hours of a 5 hour block to complete a quarter of the adventure. The problem with Influence is deeper than just GM preparation, however, as it condenses a dynamic conversation into what is effectively a series of skill checks. This, to me, reduces the amount of player choice and, as I witnessed at our table, can stifle creativity, as players tried to apply "good" skills to interactions in odd ways.

The real sticking point of this scenario, however, is the Infiltration system. If our group was tired after the Influence scene, the Infiltration scene sucked all of the oxygen out of the room. The Infiltration system is an attempt to model the narrative dynamics of heist stories in Pathfinder 2E, with poor results. I will not go into a lengthy critique of the Infiltration system here, but instead lay out two major issues I noticed with Infiltration. First, Infiltration is overly-reliant on passing specific skill checks (we were held up on a Door obstacle as we kept failing Stealth checks) to progress the scene, and lacks the fail-forward mentality of other infiltration-themed games to keep the story moving. It also requires a substantial number of successes to move forward, further slowing narrative pacing. Combined with the fact that the scenario does not use the optional Edge Points mechanic, scenes can grind to a frustrating halt as players repeatedly fail checks. Second, Infiltration, especially as it was used in this scenario, is at odds with how Pathfinder 2E groups typically interact with their environments. A typical PF2E expedition involves exploring a region and slowly learning more about it, whereas a typical heist involves a group with advanced knowledge of a space maneuvering within it to achieve a specific objective, and narrative tension arising from elements that were not initially accounted for. In this scenario, the Infiltration mechanic is applied to an exploration of a space, with an overall poor effect. Ultimately, we spent over 2 hours on this scene trying to progress before the GM waived us past, our stealth mission thoroughly foiled.

The combats in Poisonous Council were fun, if not a little bland, and enemies did not seem to utilize a variety of tactics. Likewise, the combat maps were rather unexpressed and lacked interesting choices. Mostly it was just "run at guy, hit guy with sword" or "shoot spell at guy." Standard stuff, fun perhaps, but not as engaging as other scenarios might be.

In the end, unfortunately Poisonous Council is weighed down by its utilization of clunky subsystems as a means to move the plot forward. What is left, while fun, is not memorable or rewarding. I am certain that in the hands of a expert GM with significant preparation, it would be a fun and interesting story to tell with the correct group of PCs. But the time and care needed to make this scenario run smoothly is perhaps beyond what most table GMs are able to commit.

I will say that Poisonous Council is ambitious in that it is different and paints its characters in various shades of gray, as is befitting of the now alignment-less Pathfinder campaign setting. The idea of aligning with an assassin's guild in the name of keeping Pathfinder agents safe is an interesting one, and can make for an interesting story. Unfortunately, Poisonous Council is a bit too muddled of a concoction to achieve the delicate narrative it sought to craft, even for narrative-driven players such as myself. Unless you're a fan of the River Kingdoms or Daggermark, I would give this scenario a pass.

Poisonous is a sandbox scenario with problems that can be solved in many ways. It can be a roleplay scenario, an infiltration scenario, or a combat scenario, it depends on you. It also has a small influence section.

Personally, although nothing new or unique was done in Poisonous, I thought this scenario was solid: it was well themed, had a great story, and interesting NPCs. Also, the handouts and art were very helpful.

The influence section was good, mostly because the NPCs were interesting, and it wasn’t long. I still think it would be more interesting to roleplay this section than use the influence system.

I found the herb part of the scenario (and the handout) to be a waste of time, irrelevant to the story. The only relevance it had was to reduce the number of treasure bundles the PCs receive.

Our group went off the rails a bit and the GM abandoned the Infiltration system, which made the scenario much better.

We played at subtier 3-4, chose non-combat solutions, and the scenario was just over 3 hours. If the combat approach is taken, it could run long and the combats are too easy.

Overall: A good sandbox scenario with problems that can be resolved in a variety of ways. (7/10)

This text is machine translated, sorry if it is difficult to read.

I played this scenario on PC. I found it very interesting.

Good points.
It follows the 1e scenario, but I enjoyed it even if I hadn't played it before.
Personally, I found the story interesting and the fact that I got a feel for a city I don't often get to visit was great.
There is a need for creative solutions, enjoyable role-playing and a lot of volume!
Good that the story unfolds differently depending on the PT, preferably it would have been replayable.

Bad points.
The story can be stressful for some people and the PCs can get quite lost in their personalities.
The volume of the scenario is not one that can be finished in four to five hours.
The explanation of the subsystems is inevitably complicated, which puts a lot of strain on both the GM and the PCs.
Maybe 4 PCs rather than 6 PCs would be just right.
Also, I would have liked an illustration of that character.

Once again, thanks for an enjoyable scenario, Tineke Bolleman.
And thanks to the GM and PL.

I GMed twice, 6 pc and 4 pc party. They chosed different route and conclusion and I enjoyed that a lot.

-This scenario is clearly not for 4 or 5 hour session. better play 6 to 8 hours would be fun.
-Scenario contains outlaw atmosphere and choices, or some kind of trickstar materials, both hard ways and soft ways. if thats fits for Players or PCs, may chemical reactions causes. if not, maybe some players and PCs feels stress.
-There is so many information and options for this scenario. It's not easy for handle this. for me it was pretty hard.