A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 3rd- through 6th-level characters.
Poorer citizens of Kaer Maga, the City of Strangers, have been going missing, and while many think they've simply left to emigrate to New Thassilon, a purported haven for outcasts, an independent journalist feels that there's something unsavory going on. Kaer Maga doesn't have much in the way of authorities, and those who hold any power aren't taking her seriously, so she's turned to the Pathfinder Society. The PCs need to figure out what's going on, and if it is unsavory, perhaps put a stop to it.
Written by Alison Cybe
Scenario tags: None
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
Perspective: played at high tier with a party of five. I really enjoyed this scenario.
The investigation part was nicely tuned to be straightforward, but not dumb. There were plenty of interesting little vignettes in there. Even (gasp!) the influence minigame was pretty okay in this one, which I'm normally not a big fan of. (It does help that the GM had prepared this quite thoroughly.) Overall the topic of the investigation is something we know a bit from real world news, which I think helps - you can sort of theorize what might be going on, and as you pursue leads it all becomes clear what's going on. Another aspect that I liked was that even when you get more into a dungeon crawl style in the adventure, you're still investigating and noting evidence. It makes this one stand out from other dungeon crawls.
The combats were fun, the ideal enjoyable difficulty was pretty spot on for us. We had some tense moments because some enemies were quite tricky for some classes, but that gave different people a good chance to shine too.
A couple of nitpicks (but aren't bad enough to take off a star):
- The flip tile map is quite complicated, and not really necessary. Would have been less fuss to do that theater of the mind style.
- The story is pretty dark. This might not be for everyone. The catalog page should make note of this so people can choose appropriately.
- The enemies had some action economy abilities that felt a bit cheesy good. (Overall numbers were reasonable though.)
This scenario is a bit long...But it's worth it. It has one of the most fun and innovative encounters I've had so far in PFS, both as a player and GM. I waited for a month or two, looking forward to running it for my local group, and it was completely worth the wait.
It does have a trigger warning which should be heeded, and some pretty dark material. But I liked the encounters, liked the opponents, and enjoyed the characters involved. The setting was also interesting.
Just one thing I recommend: for opponents that are "people," I recommend having an explicit fleeing or surrender threshold. One of my beefs with PFS is that Pathfinders murder people with startling frequency and everyone's just okay with it. Makes more sense if people run away or surrender. As for BBEG, undead, slimes, constructs and such, that doesn't matter to me as much...But the underlings working for BBEG? Yeah they don't get paid enough to die.
I will likely happily replay this one, because I enjoyed the scenario and the story.
Lies is mystery and investigation scenario with a mix of combat, skills, and roleplay. Played at subtier 3-4.
The strength in Lies is the story and especially the encounters, NPCs, maps, and mood in the latter half of the scenario. The encounters were challenging, unique, varied, and enjoyable. Lies had the most handouts I’ve seen in a scenario and although there were almost too many, they were useful.
The weak part of the scenario are the skill challenges. For example, if we’re trying to break into a house and I pick the front door’s lock, why does everyone else need to pick that same lock, climb through a window, smash a door, or contort themselves through a hole? I find that absolutely ridiculous. In the same home, how many Pathfinders (and successes) does it take to clear a room of cats? Seriously? This needs a skill check? How many Pathfinders does it take to pry a single floorboard? Scenarios need to stop using subsystems where they're not applicable. We also don't need to make skill checks for tasks that my 95 year old grandfather can do.
The farm was also silly. Her husband is missing and she doesn’t have enough time to talk to us until we finish her barn chores for the entire day? Yet another scenario where we take care of the kids. Babyfinder.
Luckily, the rest of the scenario was great, even if it runs long (5 hours).
Overall: Lies has some great encounters, NPCs, and storytelling in the latter half of the scenario. (9/10)
On paper this scenario should suffer from all the problems that have come up this season: too many subsystems, too many encounters, fights with generic enemies on generic maps. But somehow they all come together perfectly here and the result is a super-fun adventure.
Kaer Maga always being a fun city to visit helps and this scenario actually tones down some of its bizarreness compared to other visits - feel free to throw some of the self-haruspexing trolls onto the streets when running this GMs!. But mostly this scenario moves. From the introduction of a fun new NPC with a strong personality that can be played off of the players are give a bunch of different leads to chase down. And while the sheer number of things they'll investigate and encounter in their search for the missing can threaten to go long, each individual part never outstays its welcome. There's a variety of challenges and styles of encounters, and even in the inclusion of Season 5's omnipresent subsystems are wonderfully executed here 'X-successes-each-round-or-consequence-but-moving forward-anyway' chases generally work better for me than 'Chase Point' ones, and the Influence encounter here is by far the best of the year by having multiple dynamic events give ever-changing alternate approaches in a way that is both fun and makes sense for the scene's context.
Now, I can easily see this running long which is an issue out table didn't, but that was with some very quick combats from lucky rolls and a GM whose prior sessions of it had gone very far past the normal slots so they were extremely well-prepped and on point keeping us moving forwards But other than length concerns I found this adventure to be quite charming and fun to play, and one of the highlights of the year
Come on, at least make the scenario's make sense within the world they exist. There is a crime spree going on, half a dozen people have gone missing, what do we do? let's call on the Pathfinder society which is several hundred miles away and have the help we are asking for take the slow route using a multi week caravan trip to get to the city where a crime spree is taking place. That's dumb.
Ther rest of the scenario was OK, but it was hard to get past the completely implausible scenario set up.
Come on, at least make the scenario's make sense within the world they exist. There is a crime spree going on, half a dozen people have gone missing, what do we do? let's call on the Pathfinder society which is several hundred miles away and have the help we are asking for take the slow route using a multi week caravan trip to get to the city where a crime spree is taking place. That's dumb.
Ther rest of the scenario was OK, but it was hard to get past the completely implausible scenario set up.
The reason for this is established and shown in the 'Journalistic Integrity' section of the adventure, on page 7.
