Pathfinder Society Scenario #6-03: Godsrain in a Godless Land

I GM'ed this for low tier.

Godsrain in a Godless Land begins with a very interesting premise: How would a culture steeped in mandatory atheism react if, overnight, its citizens suddenly gained the powers of Gods against their wills? It is against this backdrop that the players depart into the city of Manaket to rescue a group of students who are the victims of this divine accident.

Written by Solomon St. John and developed by Josh Foster and Shay Snow, Godsrain in a Godless Land is a repeatable scenario for PCs of level 5-8. Set in the land of Rahadoum, where divine worship is forbidden by the (infamous) Laws of Mortality, the PCs must navigate a landscape of growing fear and antireligious sentiment to help evacuate a group of medical students who have become divinely powered to safety. It is a story tinged with themes of persecution and angst that are all too familiar in our day and age, which also means that it's easy for GMs to draw upon real-world experiences to give their characters the appropriate depth and context for the story.

I will say right out: This is a heavy scenario. It contains references to antireligious persecution and pogroms, and an on-screen depiction of suicide. It certainly is not for all audiences, and it is essential for the GM to have a conversation with the players about lines and boundaries before it begins. But it is also a scenario that has a very rich and deep concept, and can be an excellent story to tell with players who trust each other and their GM.

Influence system scenarios are often maligned because of the perception (perhaps correctly) that the influence encounter scenes will ultimately devolve into a series of dice rolls, rather than genuine roleplaying. I make no disguise of my own dislike for influence, but I think the system here wasn't too weighty. NPC stat blocks weren't chock-full of unnecessary information, gave me enough information to provide a unique persona for each NPC, and generally depicted a diverse and interesting medical class. The DCs for the challenge can be difficult unless the PCs somehow divine the correct sequence of actions needed to make their lives easier, a concept I struggled to communicate organically within the scene. Still, I did get the sense my players were able to build genuine connections between their characters and the students, which made for more interesting interactions later.

Other subsystems are handled less well. The scenario makes liberal use of point-tracking systems, as well as a modified infiltration/chase system whereby the PCs are expected to handle a series of obstacles and complications as they travel through Manaket to their various destinations. Decisions the PCs make generate or remove "awareness points," which serve to complicate scenes later. The difficulty of bypassing these obstacles is variable, ranging from reasonable (especially in part 1) to unreasonable (especially in part 2). The DCs on some checks are so high that one wonders if the PCs were meant to be able to pass them. This has been the topic of other reviews of the scenario elsewhere and I won't delve too deeply into the topic but would be remised not to mention it and question the design decisions that informed it.

One of my largest problems with the scenario, however, was time-keeping, or rather a lack of guidance on how to go about it. This is a tense sequence, especially in the second half, where it seems like the PCs have very little opportunity to stop or catch their breath. The scenario doesn't specify how long players have, or what happens if they take too long, so I made some best guesses and notified my players of these decisions before beginning play. However, what I would have liked to see is using awareness points more similarly to a Clock from "Blades in the Dark," or the AngryGM's tension dice--A visible representation of mounting narrative tension as things begin to go wrong. Perhaps generating 1 AP for every 10 minutes the PCs spend at a location more than they need to, so that time feels like a resource rather than an absence/given. I also would have liked to see AP count for more things than just enemy buffs/debuffs in a handful of encounters.

As a brief aside: This scenario doesn't quite feel like a repeatable, and there's too little variation to make it worth repeating much. The only major deviations are a handful of obstacles in part 1 and an encounter in part 2. The choose-your-path element to part 2 feels like it should have been the strategy for the entire scenario.

Now, let's talk about combat. I know some reviewers have maligned mandatory non-lethal damage, but I rather like it. It forces the PCs to make more interesting decisions than their normal optimal combat loop, and perhaps even use incapacitation effects or other means of subduing foes. Plus, the scenario does afford the PCs options if they don't or can't deal nonlethal damage--such as healing downed foes. Frankly I think the GM decision to use the normal dying rules for all humanoids is mandatory here, and at least lets the PCs react to violently downing a foe. Indeed, in my game a player critically hit with a needle darts spell and brought a foe to dying 2, with persistent bleed damage on top of that. There was an immediate pause followed by an "oh shoot" as the players began to recalibrate their actions toward saving their defeated enemy's life. It made for a more interesting narrative than simply dropping a foe and moving on to the next one.

I am not without my gripes about combat, however. I think the main enemy of the campaign, while flavorful and evocative, is a bit unbalanced in how it interacts with fully one-fourth of the game. It recalled uncomfortable memories of the Jinsul zealots from Starfinder 1E, who had abilities to shut down certain classes in a way that felt bad. It would matter less if enemy compositions in the encounters were a bit more diverse, but as it stands it was mostly group fights against multiples of the same enemy, which isn't the most interesting.

Overall, I think this scenario has an interesting premise and the fundamentals for a great story. I also think that it's not a very good story for Pathfinder Society, where you only have a limited time to explore its themes and characters. The framing feels better suited to a longer-form adventure where the PCs can come to learn more about the political climate, that is the backdrop of this scenario and give the story the room it needs to truly grow into something meaningful. I would also reiterate that the weighty themes of the scenario make it ill-suited for some tables.

Poor editing, spellchecking (especially character names), and design all hold the scenario back from realizing its true potential, and the overall product feels rushed and under-baked. However, by that same token, I would say that Solomon St. John put together an excellent recipe that, with maybe just a little more time in the oven, would have been something amazing. If this is what they have to offer, then I look forward to their future contributions to the PFS body of work.

Bottom line: Godsrain in a Godless Land is a tough, visceral story that can nonetheless be about hope. But it must be guided by a GM who can give it the respect and weight its subject matter deserves. It's not for everyone, and it's certainly got its flaws, but I'd be happy to run it again (and will update my review with any additional thoughts if I do).

This one's for me, and I'd recommend it if you like RPGs for the chance to tell interesting stories.

I ran this at 5-6 with 4 players and 14 CP. (Barbarian, Rogue, Fighter, Exemplar)

Spoilers ahoy!

I long ago decided that too much of my life was being spent being asked “what are the skills again?” in Infiltrate/Chase/Influence/Victory Point Encounters. So I print a handout list of the skills in large fonts for each challenge. I used a lot of paper.

One of our VOs has an Exemplar PC who had to flee Rahadoum as a child and had been looking forward to playing this, so I put in a couple of hours extra prep and I didn’t feel it was unnecessary.

I won’t try to dissect the scenario’s flow in detail, narratively I liked it quite a lot but the sub systems did become a bit of a slog.

The fights were straightforward enough for the well built martial party but had the potential to drag and frustrate casters doing damage.

But the scenario has had a pretty mixed reception both in its reviews and at my table. I got to wondering about why.

To me failure - from amusing social faux pas upto TPKs - must always be a possibility. Like they say in Starfleet: sometimes you do everything right and still lose! (Thus I liked the plot twist)

So for me non combat encounters where just like combat ones you have good and bad rounds but you take the hits and come out battered but able to carry on make real sense to me.

Thing is that is not what we’ve become used to & in terms of cost/benefit something seemed out of kilter here. More frustration than satisfaction ensued.

Missing info despite multiple read throughs and misprints on the PFS page also made me as a GM wonder if the DCs were wrong. Equally the difference between a good infil run and a dreadful one seemed paltry for all the effort, though players won’t know that. They’ll just get frustrated at repeatedly failing.

The influence encounter system is imperfect and the players as so often happens didn’t feel they had time to waste on Weaknesses or Resistances. Which meant it lost a lot of flavour.

And the post BBEG fight social encounter with everyone having a go convincing each of the students felt like weird speed dating.

A longer run through of the whys and wherefores of whole final evidence would have been better.

So the effort was valiant but the final experience didn’t match up to it.

I'm going to join in what most of the other reviewers have said. The number of skill challenges in this was just ridiculous and the difficulties were totally off the wall absurd.

Played at low tier with a fairly well built PFS character. Given I'm only level 5 obviously I concentrated on a couple of skills but I'd invested in both some Charisma and social skills. Not my focus but I also hadn't just ignored things.

Given that, failing with a 16 on the roll is just really, really, really demotivating. Why the heck should I even bother to build a well rounded character? One of the skills had a difficulty of at least 30 (I crit failed on a 20) which is a Level 12 task DC. At level 5.

To make things worse, most of the skill challenge failures seemed to have little actual effect. So we're just wasting time for a +1 to something?

Some of the story beats made absolutely 0 sense. You get hit by an apple turnover and are clumsy 1 for the rest of the scenario? You have to go through a 5 round influence subsystem with 5 or 6 NPCs to get them to cooperate when you're literally risking your lives to save theirs?

And killing people will lead to infamy? And, presumably, failing the scenario. The GM was nice enough to let us change things around a bit after the briefing but spellcasters have fairly few options to deal with this. As an Animist I threw exactly 0 non focus spells the entire scenario.

I'm not sure but it seemed to me that the scenario did NOT give guidance on what dying rules the GM should use for NPCs. This would mean that there will be significant table variation

That said, the actual combats were pretty trivial even though we generally failed the skill checks and so presumably things were worse for us.

I actually enjoyed the scenario but that was because I was just laughing at how silly the whole thing was.

Perspective: I ran this in low tier for 5 players at 18 CP.

Lore & Flavor
First off, I really like the flavor pesented in the scenario. The whole Godsrain messes up peoples and cultures everywhere, but the impact in Rahadoum was always going to cause a powderkeg situation.

Skills
Perspecive: I love both running and playing skill challanges.
In this case I like the way everything is setup, and I've mostly managed to convey what is requested. Yet I think this part is what's mostly going wrong in the scenario, and it has to do with the expectations that players have of skill challenges. The skill DC's seem to generally be on the high side (with a few extreme+++ DCs out there), which means odds are that players are going to fail the skill challenges. The players don't know anything about the impact of failing such challenges, so as a result I'm afraid this will cause unnecessary stress and maybe even resentment towards the scenario. To be totally honest: This scenario needs some assistance from OPM in the GM Discussion thread.

Subsystems
I think it's conceptually one of the simpeler and more elegant implementations of the

Combats
The way the encounters are setup rather interestingly, but the enemy stat blocks are missing some crucial information. I like the concept of the enemies, but what makes them cool is also their main drawback: Due to the way they are built, the combats can be a slog-fest without a heavy hitter. At the same time, religiously inclined classes get punished extremely harshly for playing. I like resilient enemies as much as the next person, but this is a bit too much, and because of this the scenario may run long.

Content warning
I understand the content warning, and I agree with other posters: This has nothing to do in a repeatable scenario. I also feel like the action that leads to it does not match the lore-wise explanation that is given in the briefing, so the whole action also feels unnecessary to me.

Humour
I had a really good laugh about the salutation part in Handout #1: It nearly beats Zarta's old PF1 letters.

Summary
All in all I'm neither negative nor entirely positive about the scenario. It has a lot of potential, but it also has some serious issues that are not being addressed, which I find a shame for what we pay for scenario's nowadays. I would only trust this scenario in the hands of an experienced PF2 GM.

(I played this scenario with a six person party in High Tier and read it afterwards)

Disclaimer: In earlier seasons (1-4), I would have given this one one star. But the fifth season has lowered the floor so low that this scenario is at least not as bad as some other recent ones, earning it a second star.

The good

The scenario presents an interesting situation in one of the areas we haven't visited in a while. Though after playing it, I am not sure I want to return there anytime soon.

The bad

Influence Subsystem - not as bad as some other incarnations of the system. The influence skills are mostly "real" skills and not random lores. One of the weaknesses are kind of insane, though

Scaling for player number - NEVER play this with 5 players! You have less total actions in the influence section and the same successes are needed in the skill challenges as with 6 people!
With more than 4 players you also have way more enemies to gain a certain type of point from, and the adventure doesn't seem to account for that

Repeatability - Influence is never a good system. Even less so in a repeatable adventure, since the players potentially already know the skills, resistances and weaknesses and it is very hard to decide if you would have guessed some of that information from the brief dossier you get or if you are metagaming.
There also are no meaningfull differences between runs of this scenario. There are two variants of the least challenging fight, as well as some different skill challenges

Nonlethal Attacks - Not everybody has the option to do nonlethal damage. And even buying Merciful Balm, since there is a lot of stuff happening between combats, you probably have to apply it at the beginning of combat. Most people will also have to draw their weapons, so you are kind of wasting a whole turn (or more) getting ready to even fight - if you have the option of using that balm at all.

The trigger - A repeatable with a serious trigger situation? Why? Was that really necessary?

The ugly

Talking about skill challenges... WTF is up with those DCs? The highest I found was 32 in Low Tier, 35 in High Tier. That is 10+ points higher than the level based DC of the characters playing the scenario! And there is more than one with a DC at 30+. Even many of the other DCs are a couple of points higher than the level based DCs would suggest.
I get that the adventure wants the players to fail (and critically fail) a few of those to acrue some Awareness Points. But there are a couple of issues with that:
1. While there is SOME hints that you are supposed to make a bit of noise (but not too much!), there is no way of knowing how much noise is OK
2. It just feels bad to fail / critically fail so many skill checks
3. Since in most instances, every character has to roll, you WILL get more Awareness Points with more players - Crit Fails automatically generate them. The thresholds in the adventure don't account for that!
4. Many previous scenarios have taught the players that you should try to avoid failing skill challenges too much, since you often lose out on secondard success conditions or treasure bundles this way. Thus a LOT of hero points will be used to try to mitigate the bad rolls until the party realizes that doing that is a waste (or is out of hero points), making the final combat even harder then it already is.

Retributive Strike - There are multiple combats with 4-8 enemies, all of which have Retributive Strike and are primarily melee damage dealers. Not only is that a pain for any GM to keep track of (who has used their reaction already?), it also has huge potential to bog the combat down and give the enemies a LOT of free attacks. RS is fine if one character hast it - it gives you an incentive to attack them instead of their allies. But if everyone has it, it becomes a problem!