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:
I ran this for PaizoCon with a table of 6 players in the high challenge tier (31 CP). The enemies that my players faced were not terribly difficult, but I didn't have the casters use the Slow spell on the party, as the party was already frustrated by the influence encounter.
The influence encounter is not very well-written or explained.
Influence encounter:
The DCs are extraordinarily hard for half of the NPCs. One of them, specifically, says to use a weak bosun if they attempt to assist the PCs in a combat encounter. By this, the NPC's Will should be a +6, but they've got +11 in the influence stat block, with correspondingly difficult DCs for both discovery and influence. The other one that's stupidly high is based off a level 6 NPC from the Gamemastery Guide, but with a higher Will, which again increases the DCs making it very hard for the PCs to even get a single success on the NPC. Assuming a level 4 PC with a +4 in the relevant ability and expert proficiency, they have a +12 on their rolls; in this case, they would need a minimum of an 11 on the d20 for the lowest influence check. Both of these NPCs have saving throws that are between Moderate and High from the Saving Throws table in the Gamemastery Guide (or High in the first one's case based on the Weak adjustment to the Bosun).
Next, the scaling. Three of the four NPCs have a default influence thresholds of 1, 2, and 4, which is completely valid and logical; the fourth and most difficult to get any influence with requires 2, 4, and 8. The scaling for this encounter in the PDF reads:
5-17 PDF, Page 21 wrote:
To adjust for the PCs’ overall strength, use the following Challenge Point adjustments.
10+ Challenge Points: For every 2 Challenge Points above 10, add 1 to each Influence Point threshold.
So, for my table at 31 CP, that means a minimum of 11 Influence Points to get the first level, which obviously can't be right, but Organized Play GMs are required to run it as written in the scenario. I also have the Foundry Deluxe Module for Season 5, which has what appears to be an errata for this scenario in the scaling:
Foundry Module wrote:
To adjust for the PCs’ overall strength, use the following Challenge Point adjustments. These adjustments are not cumulative.
19–22 Challenge Points: Add 1 to each Influence Point threshold.
23–27 Challenge Points: Add 2 to each Influence Point threshold.
28–32 Challenge Points: Add 3 to each Influence Point threshold.
33+ Challenge Points: Add 4 to each Influence Point threshold.
This makes the scaling make a little more sense, bringing the thresholds to 4, 5, 7 and 5, 7, 11 for my party. Given that the PCs only have 4 rounds, unless there's a whole lot of critting going on for both the Discovery and Influence checks, the PCs aren't going to get much done.
Finally, there is no definition in the scenario as to what Influence threshold counts as "gaining the NPC's trust", which is important for both the treasure bundles and other mechanical benefits in the scenario. Normally, I would assume that meeting the first threshold would count, but the way the thresholds are written, it seems like they're expected to hit the second one before they're "trusted".
All in all, this scenario has amazing potential, but without scaling adjustments and clarifications to the influence encounter, it is not one that I would recommend to anyone, which is sad, because I absolutely love time loop type stories.
I feel the TB and Secondary Reputation criteria were unfair, unclear, or not fun. However you want to interpret it. The players didn't have a chance to earn full credit from either or were set up to fail.
Its not fun for players to spend 4 hours only to find out they were shorted rep/gp because of things really outside of their control or bad design.
I liked the setting, lore, and fresh combat enemies. I had fun playing them in combat as GM.
Disclosure: I received this for free to run for PaizoCon@.
I ran this twice: once at the bottom of high tier, and once at the top of low tier. A not-exactly-ghost ship with time shenanigans is a great hook! Overall, this is a great adventure with two issues: poor influence scaling and high rank spells vs low level characters.
In my first run (bottom of high tier), the players were intrigued through the introduction and into the second round of influence. I initially handled the influence behind the screen, but ultimately had to reveal it during the second round as the crew interactions slowed down.
My second run (top of low tier) was with more mechanically-inclined players, so I revealed the influence from the start. I also heavily encouraged certain Discover actions, since the scaling would have made success (and the associated treasure bundles) impossible.
Why the influence scaling math does not work:
A group of six level 2 characters (top of low tier) has 50% more person-rounds to influence, compared to four level 1s. Due to the scaling, though, it takes around 170% more rounds to reach "trust" (which I assumed was the second tier of influence where they tell you about the passenger) without using weaknesses.
For comparison, a group of five level 2 characters and one level 3 (bottom of high tier) has the same number of person-rounds to influence, but only takes around 25% more rounds than four level 1s to reach trust, even factoring in the higher DCs.
This also assumes that all characters are trained in the easiest non-lore skill with a +2 modifier and that they guess that skill correctly without using Discover.
It didn't seem fair to gate treasure bundles behind reading the scenario's mind, so I told the players directly that they should discover weaknesses before skills.
The first combat was pretty tough when I had low level PCs in high tier and a complete cakewalk in low tier. That's fine, though - this is a warmup round.
The second combat has thematic, unique, and challenging foes. At the top of low tier, they did hit-and-run attacks from the corners, using their spells to their advantage. Their spell selection could lead to issues, however:
Spell issues:
At the top of low tier, the party faces four creatures, each of which can cast a DC 19 Slow. A level 2 PC with +2 Con trained in Fort saves will crit fail that 15% of the time. Four instances of that gives around a 50/50 chance of someone being slowed 2 for the combat. Hero Points can help, if they didn't spend them all trying to get treasure bundles in the influence.
I think it would have been better to give the creatures a special ability that has a similar flavor without such a harsh crit fail condition. My tables were lucky enough not to experience this, so the combat was easily the most engaging one with the Reposition action coming in clutch.
The final fight was fun, but not particularly challenging. I do wonder if it would work better with only one round of the victory point system followed by more usage of the custom Accelerate action during the combat. Both of my tables easily hit the max threshold before the combat even started.
Overall, an enjoyable scenario with some mechanical issues that could lead to a less enjoyable experience at certain tables.
An interesting scenario, but the scaling feels wonky
Precursor, expect spoilers for me to fully get my thoughts out here.
Played through the scenario today at near max low tier, 5 players. I did like the setting of the story, and it led to a nice precursor to a future adventure I look forward to playing as well. GM did a good job roleplaying the NPCs, though I was surprised there was no diplomatic option with one of the villains. Reading the scenario after the fact I can kinda see the rationale, but moving from interacting with the crew...to ambushing someone we knew little about being the best option felt out of place. Nonetheless plotwise I didn't have any major complaints with the story.
The combat felt somewhat easy. Non-severe encounters broken up so the PCs have a round before more threats arrive made cleanup a bit of a breeze, and the enemy options at least in low tier didn't have many options to hinder the party. In fact they felt more hindered by their own passives, having to reposition to attack, then reposition again to not suffer penalties.(I did like having an excuse to use reposition though.) Part of it may have been having a bard and a level 4 frontliner to render the enemy offensive mostly pointless, but even when they got to the backline it rarely seemed dire. Easy combat isn't a huge deal as I like simpler scenarios in lower level missions. And maybe high tier is more exciting, I don't exactly know yet.
The real issue comes to the scaling of the influences. I can understand why the one near the end was made easier, it basically determines success of the entire mission. The first one however, hoo boy. Please in the future be careful about allowing an Influence encounter to literally double the amount of influence points needed to hit the max threshold, and QUINTUPLE the amount for the first one. Even 6 PCs will struggle to earn 20 influence points in the span of 4 rounds to hit 1st threshold on everyone. For our 5 it was basically impossible. There also isn't much clarification on when an NPC's "trust" is earned. Is it max threshold? Or 2nd where they actually give useful intel? Or perhaps even one is enough? We got one to max and another to 2nd, and basically had to cut our losses on the other two after a few failed discovery and influence checks ruined any hope of getting anywhere on them.
The initial influence encounter somewhat spoiled the mood early on, especially since it's tied to treasure bundles. But otherwise I liked this scenario. So I'll only dock it down to a 3.
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.
