A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 1st- through 4th-level characters.
After ensuring that Fasiel ibn Sazadin saw Qadiran justice for his crimes, the Pathfinder Society received a mysterious letter from his benefactor detailing that she now sees the Society as a formidable opponent. After receiving this, Venture-Captain Safa spent quite some time traveling and researching across Qadira and Nex, only to find that the benefactor resides in Jalmeray and is a rakshasa with fine tastes. In order to find out more information about her, Safa and Rashmivati are sending a small crew of Pathfinders to attend a local auction in order to do some reconnaissance. However, while attending the formal event, the Pathfinders can't help but notice that it looks like one of the guests might have some sticky fingers!
So as many have said the influence subsystem engagement just took way too long. It was too many rounds, and there wasn’t enough information to find out who to really engage with.
The combats were a complete fail from what I could see. My group had 5 players playing in high tier, and I think we spent about 30-40mins total of the whole scenario on combat. The second to last fight was 1 round.
Pros: The influence NPCs have nice art and their backgrounds and motivations are well fleshed out.
Cons: The Influence subsystem, combats are too easy, there's no motivation to follow the plot.
The influence subsystem is never fun, especially when there's 5 NPCs across 8 rounds. The only scenario I've experienced where it worked was The Blakros Deception, where there was only one NPC to focus on.
There are too many low level enemies, rather than increasing the power of the boss. This isn't to say we should have a APL+3 boss, but fighting 3 +0 enemies is less interesting than a +1 and two -1s. Incapacitate is a trait for a reason, and having bosses at the same level as the PCs make it too easy for them to finish the boss in a single spell. Please consider increasing the difficulty on bosses to make fights more interesting, like they were back in season 2.
The motivation for the party to snoop in the manor just doesn't exist. When a new friend is injured, the party is expected to sneak into a restricted area... why? There's just no reason! The person who's missing isn't suspicious, and there's nothing to signify that they went into the manor. For all the party knows, they could have left the grounds completely. Also, please stop having us loot innocent people. Stealing from the servants should give infamy, not treasure bundles.
Finally, the title of this scenario makes no sense. We go to an auction and stop a heist, the fact that there are crocodiles has absolutely no bearing on the plot. They could have been literally any other creature and the story would have been exactly the same. If the title mentions a creature, I would expect them to be at least somewhat important to the plot.
There are times when a subsystem, despite seeming appropriate, is actually a very poor fit for a scenario. This has to be the most extreme version of that I have seen.
The NPCs this time are actually decently well differentiated, an improvement on previous influence based scenarios. But there are significant problems. First, this scenario is structured in such a way that you don't actually learn anything valuable from anyone. Its all light rumors that are largely inconsequential. Also each NPC needs 6-8 points of influence to close out. Given that there are only 5 real rounds of influence and 2 of those get eaten up by discovery, that is essentially requiring pcs to critically succeed on a reliable basis to learn everything. Its just bad design and thats before you realize most NPCs top 2 influence skills are typically Lores, which are effectively useless meaning it takes 3 discoveries to get anything useful.
This is actually to the detriment of the writing of the npcs which is fairly good but whose actions might seem completely incomprehensible if your dice were cold. The scenario also boldly states thst it should be clear who the person who is off is at the end of influence rounds is and I have to declare it was not.
The transition from this scene to the little mini exploration section was clunky and the mystery not especially engaging. The fact that this scenario has one combat and a 2nd combat you have in character reasons to avoid is also unacceptable. This is still a rpg system that is primarily about fighting things. Please let us fight. The motives of the npcs involved in the climax are pretty incomprehensible from the outside and form a sour taste for the ending.
Just...messy messy messy.
It also needs atated - the art orders in this scenario were truly atrocious, especislly the new Safa art and the Tisbah art.
The influence was pointelss - as it did not really clicked with the rest of the scenario and none of the rewards (bar one) affected the scenario - and dragged on far too long.
And the part after the influence felt disjointed - if I was not in org play why would i do research if the host of the party tells me everything is fine, the expert tells me it is fine... etc...
And asking players to bid in an auction starting with a minimum bid of more than their total wealth seems like a very well thought out idead (not).
Good part the battles were not botched that much (but scaling led to very crowded rooms)
