A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 7th- through 10th-level characters.
With clues from around Jalmeray and Niswan, Venture-Captain Safa has been able to determine where the mysterious Benefactor lives in the city. It's up a group of Pathfinders to break into the enormous mansion to confront her, while ducking the underlings and trying to find evidence of her wrongdoings. A secret plot to undermine the powers that be in Niswan is discovered and there's only one place left to corner her: her private quarters.
Written by Erin Roberts
Scenario tags: Metaplot (Unfettered Exploration)
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
As a player participating in this scenario, I have a few thoughts to share.
Pros: The presence of intriguing NPCs adds a lot of charm to the experience.
Cons: Unfortunately, the experience becomes increasingly disappointing as the scenario progresses, mainly because the intriguing NPCs are not well-utilized.
Summary: In summary, this scenario offers some unique elements but also presents challenges. Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts.
I hope this is the low point and things are improving
**Potential spoilers ahead - I've tried to avoid specific details where possible**
I recently played this and was left confused and disappointed at the end of the session - I'd have to say this is a contender for one of the worst Society scenarios in second edition to date.
Right at the beginning, the premise for the adventure just seemed... off. It really felt like we didn't really have justification for the mission, and we were engaging in activities that seemed to suggest that we were being the bad guys, regardless of the target of our actions and the "ends justify the means" mentality that seemed to be in play. We were engaging in black ops activities that definitely weren't sanctioned by the local authorities, and at one point it really felt like the scenario expected us to murder a group of individuals who didn't appear to be aggressive based purely on their species. That runs counter to what Paizo have spent a lot of effort establishing - that you can't just assume a creature is evil because of its species.
But even beyond the premise, the writing made little sense. We met a pair of NPCs for apparently no reason (their entire purpose for being in the scenario could have been replaced with a perception check to see what we could hear). The maps bore no relation to the descriptions the scenario provided - more than once our GM had to explain that doors in fact weren't there, or that we'd just traversed stairs that didn't exist.
Then we completed one of the most baffling and infuriating puzzles I've experienced. It was really unclear what on earth we were meant to be doing to solve it, and it was obvious that this wasn't the GM's fault. Then when we finally completed it, our reward had, at that point, literally nothing to do with what we were trying to achieve - until the end of the scenario when a vaguely described element tried to tie it in far too late.
Throughout it all, we were collecting evidence, which felt like it was completely disconnected from the entire premise of why we were trying to collect evidence. What we found out in #5-10 didn't seem particularly relevant to the information we found - it felt like anyone could have been enacting these plans, and it didn't matter what we'd previously found out about our target.
And then the end of the scenario loomed, and we found out our target had known exactly what we were doing all along! And they'd had plenty of time to react and choose what we could find - which immediately made us feel like everything we had done was suspect and completely worthless, as anyone with a shred of common sense would assume we had only found compromised or fake evidence. But luckily for us it turned out that the villain had in fact decided to let us succeed in our mission for no reason other than to twirl their moustache at us and deliver exposition so that season 6 can happen.
The ending was unconvincing as a result - apparently we succeeded where we definitely shouldn't have, having done a pile of nonsensical things in a nonsensical map based on a nonsensical premise, but apparently everything worked out regardless.
The one thing I can say is that we enjoyed the final combat of the scenario - our opponents had interesting abilities and great mobility, which kept things interesting and gave us a decent challenge. It was a bit challenging as a spellcaster though - our opponents had very strong saving throws, so it was hard to make anything stick - but not to the point that it ruined the combat luckily. I can definitely see it being rough for some groups though.
So ultimately the whole thing was flawed sadly, and for a scenario that was apparently wrapping up season 5 and setting up the season 6 metaplot it hasn't made me excited for the next season I'm afraid. And that's a real shame.
I had to invest a lot of time to make this adventure borderline playable when I GMed it. I had to redo the whole map so rooms and description at least superficially fit even though some things can not be salvaged if you run it RAW. Since most negatives have already been mentioned by others, I will just sum up my points here:
- The maps and description do not match and the combination is absolutely nonsensical.
- Monsters and Encounters are Missing information and have obvious mistakes
- The story is disappointing and the involved Society officials, the supposed master-schemer which is setup as major BBEG or all people involved are just stupid.
- The final fight can be extremely dangerous/frustrating if there is a variation of PC levels involved
- The secondary success condition is just missing
The only reason I raised it to 2 stars are some small, interesting details. You can choose between a Hazard and a Fight in a nice scene. The included riddles are somewhat fun and help with variation in the scenario. And finally, there are no subsystems involved which sadly is a positive by now.
This does not save the adventure though. The abysmally bad editing ruins all the fun when running the scenario, just play something else...
hey, is that normal there is no tag on the scenario when it is staged Metaplot (Unfettered Exploration) here? And there is no secondary objectives in the scenario, is that normal too?
Several reviews of this scenario appear to have vanished with no explanation of why, including my own. I was critical, as the scenario has many faults, but there was certainly nothing in there which breached any community guidelines.
Yes, curiously some reviews get eaten sometimes. And even more weirdly, it usually happens to badly-reviewed scenarios (or at least, I happen to see it more on those, see also this scenario from PF1). Indeed, they're still visible on the user's page, but don't appear on the product page.
I don't want to assume bad faith or breach of community guidelines, but it seems very coincidental. There's certainly enough bad reviews remaining that I don't think someone is "cleaning up" the reviews to make them look better than they are.
Whelp, I just checked some stuff to be sure. Turned out to be confirmation bias. Lots of positive reviews got eaten too. Nothing nefarious, but still annoying that the reviews disappear.
