A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 5th- through 8th-level characters.
Rahadoum is a land that abhors the gods, and while the death of Gorum was cause for celebration there, the Godsrain that followed brought only uncertainty. Kassi Azaril, one of the most outspoken opponents of divine magic and reknowned medical researcher, found several of her apprentices empowered after the Godsrain, and they now face growing prejudice from other citizens, stoked by a radical element within the city guards of Manaket.
Kassi does not want to abandon these students. She knows the Pathfinder Society would love to get their hands on some of her finest trainees, and so has called upon them to get her students out of Manaket and to safety. But some higher ups in the Manaket guard have decided to take matters into their own hands.
Written by Solomon St. John
Content note: This scenario contains a depiction of suicide. Before you begin, understand that player
consent (including that of the Game Master) is vital to a safe and fun play experience for
everyone. You should talk with your players before beginning the adventure and modify
descriptions of the narrative as appropriate.
Scenario tags: Repeatable, Godsrain
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
Godsrain on a Godless Land offers a blend of high-stakes rescue, skill-based exploration, social challenges, and a climactic boss encounter—all set in Rahadoum’s notoriously godless landscape. Unfortunately, while the premise intrigued me, the scenario ultimately left me frustrated and disengaged. Here’s why:
Act One: The Skill Wall
The adventure begins with the PCs rushing to rescue a group of magically gifted students from an angry, godless city. That urgency, however, is undermined by an early sequence of skill challenges with DCs that border on absurd. One moment stood out in particular: a PC rolled a 17 on a check in a skill they were built to excel at, and failed.
At level 5, a character with expert proficiency and a +4 attribute has a +13 bonus. When the DCs are 30–32, you’re asking players to roll 17–19s just to succeed at tasks they’re good at.
Our GM did a great job with what he was given kept reassuring us: “Don’t get discouraged. The DCs are just really high.” That became a running mantra. We found ourselves repeatedly asking if we were being run through the wrong subtier. We weren’t.
Act Two: Hostile Civilians and Helpless Heroes
After pushing through the futility gauntlet, the party reaches the students—who are, bafflingly, still packing. There’s an angry mob. We’re facing legal execution. And instead of fleeing, we’re helping them decide which textbooks to bring?
Mechanically, this introduces an influence subsystem, and while the DCs here were more reasonable, the narrative was harder to swallow. The students were among the least likeable NPCs I’ve encountered in PFS: ungrateful, indecisive, and completely oblivious to the urgency of the situation.
To make matters worse, we were explicitly instructed that we could not kill the agents trying to kill or capture the students. So: the enemy gets to play full-contact, and we’re expected to play 2-hand-touch. This wasn’t a test of tactical creativity or moral complexity, it was a straitjacket. The tension between player agency and authorial intent was palpable.
That act concluded with a combat encounter that felt fairly scaled, but the narrative dissonance lingered: we’re risking our lives to rescue people who don’t want to be saved, from enemies we’re not allowed to neutralize.
Act Three: More High DCs, Less Hope
Just as we thought we were in the clear, Act Three dumped another batch of “DC 32 for basic tasks” skill challenges on us. At this point, morale at the table was low. More players asked again if we were being run in high tier. More reassurances were given: “Nope, that’s just the scenario.”
These skill checks were supposedly tied to the final boss fight—pass enough and the fight gets easier. But when your odds of success are under 10%, it doesn’t feel like meaningful player choice. It feels like you’re rolling just to fail.
Finale: The Cutscene Tells You How You Feel
The boss fight itself is interrupted by a scripted cutscene that overrides player agency mid-combat. The ultimate resolution is telegraphed enough to make sense—but I wouldn’t have made the choice the scenario forces. The key NPCs felt more bullied than persuaded, and the moral closure rang hollow.
Final Thoughts
I’ve criticized overly punishing scenarios before, but this felt like something different. This wasn’t difficulty arising from misunderstood rules, it felt intentional. As though the goal was to prove a philosophical point, and the players were just along for the ride.
If you like high-difficulty social challenges, rigid morality constraints, and skill checks designed for demigods, this may be for you. But if you’re looking for a scenario that rewards smart play, offers real choices, or makes your character feel competent, I’d look elsewhere.
The influence system doesn’t make sense in this story
Godless is an influence system and combat scenario
I think the concept and story behind Godless was really interesting, I just really disliked the implementation.
First you do some skill checks to see how fast you can get to the compound. OK, time matters, even minutes! You even pass soldiers rallying to arrest the mutants at your compound! Everything indicates that the people you are rescuing need to bug out in 5 minutes or less.
And when you arrive at the compound, THE INFLUENCE SYSTEM. Are the mutants ready to go? NO. You need to talk to them, discovering their hobbies, what they like, dislike, and CONVINCE THEM to leave for 2.5 bloody hours of gaming time, which amounts to at least that amount of time in the scenario! The healers were narcissists and very annoying as well.
Literally, we passed a squad of soldiers looking to lynch them on the way to the compound. The healers are infused with divine healing magic from Gorum’s blood. Divine magic is punished with death. The mutants have been sitting around for 2 weeks knowing this. And they know we are here to bring them to safety. And they still need 3+ hours of convincing to leave. Argggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. But of course we need to do it, because... treasure bundles.
Honestly, if this was a campaign and not PFS, where we have a safety net, I’d ask the mutants once and then just leave. It wouldn’t be worth the risk to us, where we could easily be up against 100+ soldiers and torn apart. Because that’s what would really happen.
Instead of using the influence system, this would have been a really good time to let UNUSED feats like Group Impression (Diplomacy), Glad-Hand (diplomacy), Group Coercion (intimidation), Quick Coercion (Intimidate), and even Charming Liar (Deception) be useful. This would have been the perfect time for these skill feats to shine, but they are ignored again.
Other reviews already mentioned the challenging fight where we are handicapped. Again, Paizo is TRYING to give us infamy. That was never the idea behind infamy, infamy should only be used when players are being jerks, and it’s not even needed then. Scenarios should stop trying to give infamy and scenarios should also stop trying to reduce treasure bundles in unreasonable ways.
In another encounter, it’s been 2 weeks since Gorum’s death, why would we be the ones to encounter magical garden plants or roaming giant wild dogs? Someone would have discovered this before us.
”The suicide ending was immature and we all kind of laughed.”:
You just killed yourself, after explaining out loud exactly what you were doing, in front of at least a dozen of your men and maybe as many as 50+ commoners watching from windows because we are deep inside a high-density city. And there is magic that can be used to tell the truth! How are you going to blame your death on us?
You could telegraph his resurrection a mile away as well. This part of the story was very preachy as well.
I would have loved to do this story with a different, more realistic, and more mature implementation.
Overall: A good idea with a bad implementation. (3/10)
"Kassi Azaril, one of the most outspoken opponents of divine magic and reknowned medical researcher, found several of her apprentices empowered, and now facing" is a strange place for that sentence to end. What are they facing?
Haven't played PFS in years due to my local shutting down during the pandemic and online games drying up after quarantine ended, but I've been waiting a long time for Rahadoum content, so if I can't find anyone to run this I'll do it myself.
This is effectively what I expected would happen after the Godsrain. There's no way it wouldn't make Rahadoum uneasy. I'm curious about some of the details and context we're lacking, though.
Another 2 questions since I'm preparing this scenario right now
Final combat spoiler:
Tier 7-8, with high scaling, Hateful Capitan Nanaeil has the same stats as Resolved Capitan Nanaeil. Should I run it as is, or will there be some guidance on how to fix it?
Moreover, final combat gives some fancy loot, including an uncommon item, yet the chronicle doesn't seem to grant access to them. Is this right?
Edit:
The tables at the end of the scenario are also tables for levels 1-4 instead of levels 5-8 (Treasure table and CP table).
1. The Perception and Will modifiers in all the NPC sheets are the same for both levels 5-6 and levels 7-8, except for Talha (higher in the levels 5-6 than in the levels 7-8) and for Yezza (they seem correct);
2. For Yezza, the DC for Influence with Deception and Diplomacy are inverted:
(DC 24 Deception, DC 27 Diplomacy) for levels 5-6
(DC 27 Diplomacy, DC 30 Deception) for levels 7-8
Travel phase 1:
3. First paragraph of page 6:
"To overcome each obstacle without detection, at
least half of the party (rounded up) must succeed
on the associated skill check, with a critical success
counting as 2 successes. If the PCs accrue a number
of successes equal to or less than half of the number
of PCs (rounded up), they accrue 1 AP per obstacle
that they fail in this manner."
What happens if the successes are exactly half of the party (rounded up)?
The following content note has been added to the store page (it was already contained in the PDF):
Quote:
This scenario contains a depiction of suicide. Before you begin, understand that player consent (including that of the Game Master) is vital to a safe and fun play experience for everyone. You should talk with your players before beginning the adventure and modify descriptions of the narrative as appropriate.
Please accept my sincere apologies for failing to publish this prior to the scenario's release.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
A couple editing issues I noticed:
1) Captain Nanaeil is listed as having the Twin Riposte reaction, but does not have Twin Parry, which is required in order to use Twin Riposte.
2) For the Organized Play information on page 39, the treasure bundle chart gives the treasure bundles for levels 1-4, and the challenge point calculation section lists the challenge points for levels 7-10. Both of these are incorrect as this scenario is for levels 5-8.
Organized Play Coordinator
