A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 3rd- through 6th-level characters.
Within the heart of devil-cursed Cheliax, Greensteeples Manor, home of the illustrious Jeggare line, secretly stands as the only stronghold of the Pathfinder Society. However, among the fallout of handling the scandal of her cousin within the past few years, the queen of Cheliax has learned of the manor's true nature. With tensions rising in the nation, an order has been placed to her two most loyal Hellknight orders to capture any beings within the manor and burn the traitorous home to the ground in the name of Asmodeus. While Varian's safe in Korvosa, the Pathfinders in the area must act swiftly to rescue the innocents within and ensure that what few secrets can be saved are moved to a safer location, lest they fall into the hands of Queen Abrogail!
I played this at High Tier and read parts of it afterwards to confirm some things.
TL;DR: Individual Obstacles are a BAD idea! Other than that: Very basic adventure with not enough explanation of the background.
The good:
- I struggle to find anything about this adventure that I would consider to be actually "good". Some parts were OK or decent, but nothing positive stood out. Well, maybe that this one actually had some challenging fights that didn't feel off or unfair?
The bad:
- What is Greensteeples? Why is it important? Is this one of those adventures where you need to have played other adventures to actually make sense of the setting?
- Who is the guy in the wheelchair at the end? Why would we want to talk to him or even give him those items? That scene didn't make any sense!
The ugly:
- The infiltration in the beginning has several serious issues:
1. The whole group only gets ONE preparation roll? Ooph. So you hardly have any ways to mitigate failures or missing skills
2. There is no scaling for higher numbers of PCs. Since you have to make more rolls (individual obstacles, see next point), you WILL acrue more awareness
3. There are multiple "individual" obstacles in the infiltration. One of them has only two possible skills: Arcana and PFS Lore. While all NEW characters will have PFS Lore, there is a substantial chance that a not-remastered character will play this adventure - especially since having played a specific adventure from an earlier season links to this one. And you need TWO successes on that obstacle. That obstacle alone can lead to a single character amassing a LOT of awareness points!
When we played this adventure, we were six players, all of them experienced and many people with 3-5 GM glyphs among them. The infiltration cost us 10 of our 12 hero points. It was NOT fun!
- WTF is with the art in this adventure? The pictures of Dame Sabina Malatesta and that of the two Maralictors just looks BAD! Especially Marius Salutio!
Conclusion: This is so far one of the worst scenarios in season 6. Not quite as bad as the Godless one, but still not a good experience overall.
Infiltration rules at their full potential, enemy abilities that had the whole table excited, one of the best-written fail states I've seen in PFS in the past decade, and some truly difficult combats.
Greensteeples is a combat scenario with a skill gauntlet at the start.
One of the problems with Greensteeples was that it had no context. What is Greensteeples? Why do we care? Why was the lodge being attacked? Why were people left behind? We slowly got this information by asking questions, but the mission was not clear or clearly written.
The faction missions didn’t add anything to the session and added unnecessary confusion.
Other than being confusing, the story was really basic.
The skill gauntlet had some good ideas, but the way they are implemented in PFS2 (seasons 2+), they lack a soul. A bunch of meaningless skills checks. Give us a problem and let us come up with a solution.
The combats took a long time and one was very challenging (it was Severe and close to a wipe). We finished in 4.5 hours and rushed the ending.
Overall: A simple but good story with a challenging combat encounter (7/10)
Ring Side Report- RPG review of Pathfinder Society Scenario #6-12: The Burning o
Basics- Greensteeples burns! Thrune attacks the Pathfinders at Greensteeples, and it's your job to help. Can you get in, get your friends, and get out?
Mechanics or Crunch- This adventure covers a lot of bases. It has an infiltration round and several combats. Infiltration could be better described in the core books, but what's here functions ok within the rules themselves. There is a smattering of social encounters, but overall, it's several small events as the players attempt to sneak in, kill bad guys, get friends, and sneak out. It’s good overall, with only a few small issues. 4.75/5
Theme or Fluff- I know Thrune doesn't like the Pathfinders, but there seems like there is more going on, but I don't know it. I feel like this is setting up something big, but I don't have enough to tell my players about it. There is moving and shaking, but I don’t understand it. I'd like to know more than what's here. The base plot is fine, but the bigger plot is something I think isn't well explained. 3.75/5
Execution- It’s Paizo. I keep saying they do this well, and they did this well again. 5/5Summary- I liked this one, but I wish I could love this one. I need more big story beats. I felt like I missed it here, so my players may miss it as well. The major events went well, and the players and I had fun with the crunch. The execution is on point as always. I just want to know more of what is going on. 90%
I recommend reading through the whole infiltration chapter of GM Core and printing out page 199 (200 in the PDF) of GM Core as a player (and GM) handout to assist with the infiltration sequence. This infiltration sequence will be challenging / quite difficult for parties without a good skills person to provide the Follow the Expert exploration activity.
(If your party includes Rogues and Investigators, remind them of 'Follow the Expert' and let them shine!)
★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★
Remember that some obstacles are Group and others are Individual. The Overcome entry lists whether the PCs need to overcome an object individually or as a group.
For individual obstacles,each PC needs to earn the required number of Infiltration Points themself.
For group obstacles, all PCs working toward that obstacle pool their Infiltration Points toward it together.
★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★
Also, the official handouts include the DCs of the Infiltration, which I thought that perhaps the players should not see. So I've redone the Burning of Greensteeples Player Handouts with the intent that handouts 1 and handouts 2 + 3 can be printed on one double-sided page with no spoilers for players from handout 4.
I am adding an original handout, this one for the very end / conclusion of the scenario.
Conclusion BIG Spoilers + Handout:
Seriously, don't read this spoiler unless you are GMing the scenario or have already played it.
Spoiler:
There is talk within the scenario of the 'True Queen of Cheliax' and a surprise sapphire bracelet for Zarta. Since the context of this involves a storyline from before Pathfinder 2nd Edition, I prepared a deep lore dossier on Zarta that might answer some player questions.
Contributor
