A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 1st- through 4th-level characters.
The Pathfinder Society has heard reports of a ship sighted over and over, apparently following the same path before vanishing each week. This unfortunate ship is stuck in time, repeating the same week over and over. The crew has tried everything to escape this fate, and gave up years of the same week ago. The PCs must find a way to return things to normal and save the crew from an eternity of this single week.
Written by William Fischer
Scenario tags: Faction (Horizon Hunters)
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
As a concept, this scenario sets up an interesting mystery to be investigated and solved (I echo may other reviewers that its a mystery perhaps better suited for more experienced Pathfinders, but let's set that aside).
The problem is that you don't actually investigate anything. Instead, it's yet another Influence scenario to convince the trapped crew to tell you who's responsible for the problem - something they all seem to already know and suspect, yet have not bothered to do anything about.
Plenty has been said in reviews this season about the Influence mechanic and its use/overuse in frequency. The core issue of its presence here is that Influencing represents the entirety of solving the mystery. Instead of looking for clues or piecing together suspicious movements or items that appear amiss, the PCs just beg four NPCs to 'like me!' again and again. And it is not even that NPC gives you a clue once Influence: they give you the answer. This is profoundly unsatisfying for something that was presented as a 'strange mystery' scenario.
This misapplied subsystem makes the scenario stumble from the start and it never recovers. I do appreciate the final encounter design - the use of different 'victory' conditions beyond just 'kill all enemies' is a nice change of pace and the PCs' prior actions affecting it tie in nicely - but the other combats and encounters are fairly average and the scaling throughout the scenario appear badly skewed on the Developer side.
The basic idea of the scenario is very interesting, but it would be served a lot better with being a higher level scenario (both for the plot or for the enemies)
The influence part was utterly useless and a repeat of the most annoying subsystem of this year for no benefit. Looking at the scaling math it feels like someone did not realize the implications of scaling here…
Also having nearly the same skillset (at least for the early discoveries) to be the same is also bad gamedesign.
Please do no more influence encounters that do not add anything worthwhile to the scenario.
2 Points for the Idea/the setting (for a higher level scenario could have been 4)
+1 Point for the interesting nonstandard combat encounter design
-2 for the influence encounter
= 1 Star
I'm a bit torn by this scenario. On the one hand, I find the idea of the time-plot and the design of the final encounter very interesting. I like fights that are more than just "go there and destroy". That was definitely attempted here in the scenario. Whether it was implemented well or badly is a matter of opinion. But the fight was at least a lot more interesting than most of the fights that the current season had to offer. The first fight, on the other hand, could have been interesting in terms of the challenge itself if it hadn't been for the absolutely unfavorable map. Why do you have to hold areas in which there are potentially 6 player characters against an increasing number of opponents and absolutely minimalist areas? I also think it's stupid to say "Guys, ignore the marked crates, they're just not there". Where is the immersion there?
The story itself has good intentions for a one-shot, but clearly has gaps in logic. The introduction to this adventure on the high seas could have used a little more time to get the players "in the flow". Then we finally board the Yesterdays Tide, there are NPCs on deck, the players want to get straight into the role-playing game and what do we do? We say "Stop!" because the NPCs don't talk to anyone unless we have (once again) brought out the Influence subsystem. Okay, you can certainly incorporate good role-playing here too. But how are the player characters supposed to judge the NPCs if they're rather lethargically bored with doing nothing? Never mind, we have the Influence system, so let's use it. And how do we use it? Right, by making it as difficult as possible for some group constellations, because almost all skill tests of all four NPCs are almost identical. Wonderful. A high for individual party compositions.
Unfortunately, I can only give the scenario two stars, but in my opinion it's one of the better scenarios of the many disappointing ones this season ;)
Good Lord, I just wanted to play this with my Merfolk since I'm trying to get credit for the water related scenarios but I see now why its rated so low.
I'll start with the following question: Why is this a 1-4?
That's everything that was crossing my mind the entire time I played this. Why is this one not a 5-9? It really, REALLY feels like a 5-9. The DCs, the monsters, the idea of some of the questions you can ask the quest-givers. It all screams 5-9, and if it really was a 5-9, I think this scenario would have been greatly improved. That being said:
Influence subsystem again. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until PFS catches on. "STOP!" The influence subsystem does NOT work very well in a PFS setting. And it works even less well when you have multiple NPCs, each with their own influence thresholds, each of which you're supposed to get super high, and at least one of said NPCs has stupidly high DCs. I feel like influence must be a "shiny new toy" that everybody decided to use all at once and it's really starting to tire out my store's player-base.
And then....Why use such a big, obscure map when we're going to fight in the smallest possible room on the map?
The (should have been) final combat was interesting, but they missed a key part of scaling down to levels 1-4. Those spells (you know the two. The duality of time) should NOT even be considered at this tier. Especially in tandem. Just....
And then the scenario....doesn't end there? Why in the world does the scenario not end there? Are we forgetting the influence subsystem ABSOLUTELY constitutes an encounter? Everyone was just super confused that there was more to the scenario. People were legit putting their dice away, when the GM had to break the news.
If it ended without that last bit, I'd easily hand this one three stars and call it a fine scenario. The length would have been perfect. But it seems PFS is still stuck in the season 5 curse of "way too long", even in scenarios with completely reasonable wrapping up points. Super disappointing given the concept presented. This one could have been really, really cool.
Clarifications/corrections for this scenario have been added to the Foundry modules. I've posted those in the GM discussion thread.
I have to say, it's doubly frustrating that the devs/writers seem to have stopped answering questions here and the GM Discussion forum, but they are giving info to the Foundry team which the users of the PDF are never likely to see.
The scaling on this adventure feels off in multiple ways.
As was stated in the review that was posted, the influence encounter to rouse the crew has a very high degree of difficulty and is harder the more PCs are involved; especially with the captain, whose thresholds are incredibly high.
Probably more seriously, though, even at the 1-2 tier you have to deal with a Rank 3 spell, Slow, a lot, also with a really high DC, which means with average proficiencies for level, the party is very likely to have at least one crit fail. If that crit fail falls on a sorcerer or other spell caster, expect to have a very frustrated player on your hands. I rolled a 1 and I was like, "Welp. I'm going outside. I'll shield every turn because there's literally nothing else I can do unless a monster wanders into melee range."
I get what the designer was going for, but I feel like this should have been a tier 3-6 scenario because of the number of monsters with Rank 3 spell slots, and having the possibility for a player's first experience with Pathfinder (tier 1-4 is open to beginning players, after all) be having 2/3 of their actions stripped from them for one or more fights could be seriously damaging to the game and PFS.
I just played this scenario at level 3-4 range on a bard.
The flavor and narrative was fun and enjoyable. The story is well crafted, and the storybeats keep it interesting. Creating a seafaring adventure/mystery and keeping it interesting throughout is difficult to do well, and I think this adventure succeeded on all points there. I _loved_ the detail for the hounds and the room shape requirements, I look forward to hearing about someone's creativity for taking advantage of that.
Despite purchasing as a part of the whole season, this scenario is a skip from me for GMing for PFS (where the scenario must be run as printed) unless/until its significantly reworked.
Captain Fidero's DCs are too difficult for the level range for the influence encounter, it seems like as configured it is in the 3-6 or 5-8 level range for most of the DCs. Some of the other DCs also seem to be too high for this level of play, especially with how critical they are for succeeding.
Definitely agree with the points that Stormwarden has pointed out that need to be addressed.
