A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 1st- through 4th-level characters.
A new year comes for the Pathfinder Society, and what better way to start it off than by attending a fancy event? The Pathfinders find themselves invited to a charity dinner to benefit the Knights of Lastwall fighting in far-off lands against the lich king, Tar-Baphon. They're not the only important Absalom-based faction there however, as the event is filled with lords and ladies and socialites of all kinds, including the Peacebuilders, a group dedicated to ensuring the Pathfinder Society pays for any of its mistakes. In the middle of dinner, evidence of a strange ritual is found and the Pathfinders must investigate before dinner becomes a murder mystery!
Basics- Pathfinders, are you ready to PARTY!? This intro scenario for this year's Pathfinder Society season has you go hobnob with the snobs of Absolom to make a good impression. All you got to do is be nice, show the Pathfinder Society is good, and make a friendly impression. What could go wrong?
Mechanics or Crunch- This adventure’s mechanics are on point for an intro adventure. There are about four different encounters in this adventure. It’s pretty heavenly split between some social, some light exploration, and combat. All of them feel like they fit for the levels they aim for. This adventure is the standard excellent Paizo crunch I expect.5 /5
Theme or Fluff- Intro adventures have tough ground to cover, and this one does well, but it’s not perfect. The adventure has the players go to the party, and start with a few different mini interludes. These work well, but players can't see all the characters and their small side quests and vignettes. Not bad, as the forced adventures where players have to do all the side quests get a bit story heavy, but these all kind of boil down to “do good and learn that one person doesn't like you”. Next there is the new antiPathfinder group who aren't evil, and you have to avoid them. Then you quite literally have to fight devils and then save someone’s life. After that people try to run you over. After that you must convince everyone you're awesome after literally saving people from the devil. Lastly there is one last optional combat that’s fun. The story gets a bit disjointed as you save them every step of the way, but people still don't like you. Maybe that’s more realistic than I think having just reread that again. 4.5 /5
Execution- This is just a yadda yadda of all my other Pathfinder reviews. Good layout, easy reading, good pictures, good resources, good handout….yadda yadda yadda. I expected Paizo to make a good layout for the adventures, and I got it. I might quibble about not having all the monster pictures in the book, but that has more to do with there being three different fights possible in the middle, but seeing as those on their free database with pictures, that feels too pedantic for even me to downgrade them for. 5/5
Summary- This isn’t perfect, but this might be one of the better year intro adventures out there. The mechanics are good. The flow is not perfect, but it works decent enough. The adventure itself is solidly crafted. It players in under four hours, and is fun enough that everyone had a blast. If you want to jump in to Pathfinder Society, this is a good starting point as either a GM or a player. 97%
... I play this for a second time and i like this.
I do question why in a place where Knights of Lastwall are (a problem for all the meta plot) they don't do anything. Ulthun is there, he is a champion! This is his home!
And being so... passive is outside of the knights' motto.
Story wise this was interesting, and it was already set into motion during season 5. I'm curious to see what's going on here, though I'm not sure I like it.
Combat wise, the fights were not very interesting. Particularly the last fight makes use of a creature that should not be there at the level 1-2 subtier, ever, regardless of CP.
Mechanics wise, the GM described the part between the first and second combat as confusing. Also forcing at least 1 PC to sit out a whole combat should not be considered when writinga scenario: It works in movies and series, but not in a tabletop RPG, as you rob these players of a chance to have fun. Finally, basically have multiple scenes back to back without a chance at downtime is fine at higher levels, but for low level (and especially intro) scenarios, this is just not fun.
Skill wise, I like it: The DC's seemed reasonable and well spread out.
Mechanically a fine scenario that doesnt have any major glaring issues.
But ugh. This plot direction. Please stop.
The Knights of Lastwall come off as being a kind of griftery chariry organization and the Society runs afoul of the HOA.
What happened to just....a sense of adventure. You play Intro 1 and Intro 2 and get the promise of an organization going to interesting locales and discovery.
Then the season intro is local politics with the HOA. I can (and DO) get that at home.
Influence is a mix of combat, roleplay, and skill challenges.
I didn’t like the story in this scenario at all. Hang around a party until the evil guys do something evil, fix what the evil guys are doing, have the evil guys smile and giggle the entire time, have evil guys accuse you of wrongdoings, evil guys repeat and do it again and again. There’s no PC agency, just the PCs reacting to one situation after situation, forced to go with the flow.
Before anything happens, do some random side quests for NPCs you-don’t-know, because you are afraid of losing treasure bundles. The auction quest should have had a high chance of failure. Performing this criminal act was extremely embarrassing for the PF society (successful or not successful, word will get around) and damaging for our reputation.
Despite spending significant time with various major NPCs, I didn’t fully understand who they were, what their organization does, or why they are important.
Everything about this scenario felt forced and I didn't feel like there was room for player choice.
”Many things didn’t make sense”:
If we stop two demonic encounters, when someone screams "the Pathfinders are going to kill everyone", why is the crowd scared of level 1 characters? Why would they suspect Pathfinders of mass murder, and if so why were we invited to the party? If they were validly scared, why are they still at the party after the first attack? Where are their bodyguards? If they fear us, why would they want to run TOWARDS us?
How did a low-level cleric perform a ritual to kill party goers without the party goers knowing about it? That’s high-level magic (that doesn’t exist to my knowledge), and even if it could even be performed, why would they waste it here?
Why would a planar restaurant be deemed safe when Absalom isn’t safe? Why would the party continue without at least level 1 bodyguards?
Why would a single bug, less than the size of a dinner plate, be able to do 20 hit points of damage (with no crits) to a 1st level character, dropping her to 0 hit points before she can even act? Maybe if the bug was larger?
Overall: This might be OK if you don’t think too much about it and just follow the breadcrumbs. (5/10)
There seems to be a potential error with this module.
Module Spoiler:
The map references on page 15 seem to conflict with the descriptions that start on page 13. For example, area B1 is described as a watchtower, but the map looks like it's meant to be area B2, the Temple of Iomedae, since it includes the pews and the altars.
So, I just ran this scenario and there was a disagreement about the tile game that Teritha invites the players to join. I thought that if a PC wins the final round, they get 7GP (in low tier) IN ADDITION to treasure bundles. One of the players said that it does not work that way in any scenario. I'm not sure of what to do.
So, I just ran this scenario and there was a disagreement about the tile game that Teritha invites the players to join. I thought that if a PC wins the final round, they get 7GP (in low tier) IN ADDITION to treasure bundles. One of the players said that it does not work that way in any scenario. I'm not sure of what to do.
Bit late to answer, but the player was correct. Treasure bundles represent all of the monetary reward in a scenario. It's an abstracted method. On page 51 you can see that the PCs earn a treasure bundle for each of the party festivities they succeed at, up to a max of 2. Those treasure bundles represent the gold they're winning in the games.
