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:
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
I've now GMed this one twice, and both times the group had a blast! I absolutely love the primary NPC for this, and the table was fully convinced some very bad things were going to happen if they didn't act. Both times, without fail, the sighs of "Wait, is this guy really...." came at some of the reveals and just....
Chefs kiss.
Yes, there are absolutely some flaws here. It uses multiple subsystems it doesn't really need, and it hits the fatal flaw that all of Season 5 seems to be falling for in the length. Uses Flip Tiles for a map. It even has an unnecessary map!
Despite all of that, this one redeemed itself. Great encounters. Fun abilities. Strong roleplay, even from those that don't usually do so. I cannot recommend this one enough. Just be prepared to start on time and still have it take almost 5 hours if you're doing the subsystems and everything.
First off, I want to say this is not a slam on the author. I adored the NPCs. I thought the story was great and well written. What is so very wrong with this scenario is that it took my well run group 6 hours to complete this scenario.
I'm a very experienced GM with years of experience running Pathfinder Society scenarios. I have 5 stars, 4 glyphs, and have run over 150 games in second edition. I'm used to encounter math for any given scenario and knowing how it fits into timeslots. This year has been bad on a few occasions and this is one of them. There are just too many encounters!!! Combats, a social encounter, a challenge encounter, and many skill checks. Even if a GM were to shut down all roleplay opportunities, which would be a travesty because every interraction with Nelly is golden, it would require a well organized group that knew exactly what each player wanted to do on their turn and all rolled well in order to get through this in a 5 hour time block.
This is more of a problem with the development of scenarios this season than anything else. Combat math has grown this season and gotten to the point where a number of scenarios have grown longer and this is the second scenario this season where I've run at about 6 hours. We need more scenarios that are a bit challenging but still fit well in a 4 hour block for running at our FLGS. We need less of the development choices that have been made this season and more scenarios that fit well into blocks for live sessions at out local game stores, which are 4 hours at most.
Overall the writing was solid, Nelly is the main reason this gets 1 star instead of 0, which I can't give anyway because the list doesn't go that low, but the development is bad and it's the combat math and balance of this scenario.
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.
