Pathfinder Society Scenario #6-20: The Overthrow of Ambition

I played this at High Tier, I have run it at High Tier.

This is a deeply flawed scenario which is very disappointing for a season end metaplot. It is riddled with errors and the entire premise seems deeply flawed.

The first encounter is decent but has a glaring weakness if you disarm Hesla. The second encounter is pointless. Its a resource draining encounter which does nothing as there is no follow up encounter.

The entire chase scene has no actual impact on the scenario. Overall I wouldnt look to run or play this again.

(We just finished playing this scenario in high tier and I read though it afterwards to check a few things that weren't clear from a player perspective)

TL;DR: This adventure is a fitting end to one of the worst metaplots I can remember! Take note, though, that I said "fitting" and not "good". Because like all the other adventures in the Hesla-Storyline, it is TERRIBLE!

But let us have a bit of a closer look:

The good:
- There is a (slight) chance that enough groups have acted or rolled in a way that this is the last we see of Hesla Embersplitter. I doubt it, though.
- Nothing else. This one does not have a single redeeming thing to it!

The bad:
- The combats in this adventure are very uninteresting. Two fights total, one against a single opponent and potentially a hazard - with the singular opponent not having much in the way of truly interesting things to do. The other fight is against multiple lower leveld swarms. Both didn't pose any challenge, at least not to the group I played with.
- There is a chase in the middle of the adventure that doesn't do all that much, other than waste time. There is no real failure possible, and all you get for failing is some NPC showing up. Which, honestly, would have been more interesting than the successfull run my group did.
- For whatever reason, the author of the chase thought it would be a good idea to include some terrible puns in a scene where the whole city is being attacked. A good way to remove any kind of drama from the situation!
- One of the obstacles in the chase has the option to use attacks or spells against guards, with NO negative consequences for doing so. WTF?

The ugly:
- The whole story side of this adventure is just HORRIBLY bad!
- The plan is to temporarily resurrect a demon lord in the middle of a friggin' city to destroy an artifact?! Whose idea was that?! Couldn't it have been done somewhere else?!
- Also, the PCs have no idea that his actually WAS the plan. The adventure never tells them. So the see a demon lord, whose corpse has been found earlier in the season, coming out of nowhere, with no explanation given to them.
- Why in all the god's name does this adventure try HARD to redeem Hesla? Yes, she has had a bad childhood. But last we saw here, she tried to destroy a settlement to demonstrate her power. Really good Pathfinder / ally material here!
- Unless the players AND some NPS roll REALLY well, they don't even have the chance to deal the final blow of the adventure. That is taken out of their hands by an NPC.

I would have loved to give this adventure 0 stars, but unfortunately, that is not possible. At least this metaplot is done now. Maybe we will be getting something better next season?

I GMed it once and will never touch this thing again. It might come down to personal taste but here are my opinions. The adventure has several major flaws I will go through, but beware spoilers:
1. It has a lot of mistakes. The writing has grammatical mistakes and missing words. The conditions in the end have an area where you just do not fall in range of any of the “epic ending cutscenes”. Hesla has an action, which is clearly meant as a free action but is declared as one action and so, you will not use it. “This will have later repercussions” – it doesn’t. The list goes on, but editing bad and so on is nothing new.
2. The adventure feels like it was designed as a special, which was forcefully squashed into a regular scenario. The whole society gathers to defend the Grand Lodge and the only team doing anything is the second best team? Are all the very high levels in Sarkoris? The structure even follows the special build up: five unrelated tasks, central event, more unrelated task (here squished into an awkward chase), a central fight and then the finale. It just feels weird.
3. But the worst part is the story. This adventure wants you to redeem the BBEG who last adventure tried to murder a whole village and swore she would burn more cities to the ground. The group is reminded several times, “there is still good in her” and “She has so much pain inside”. If they do not follow up and talk to her the most likely ending is an important NPC dying and a heavy deduction in rewards. When you fight her, the adventure even forces the GM to give her dying as any PC would get, just to make sure she does not die. This feels weirdly passive railroady. A tragic ending where you had to slay her because she just could not be redeemed would have been so much more fitting. Not everyone has to be recruited by the Society. Additionally, Eando just stands by while Ambrus hands the PCs the rune, which remains when Riftcarver is destroyed, and proposes they put it on their weapons… WHAT? Why does a rift in reality open where a resurrected Ingalor just exists? Did Zarta really plan to resurrect a Demon Lord in the middle of the biggest city in the world? Nothing feels like it makes sense.
4. Nonsensical gameplay decisions.  Just examples: all NPCs (5 or 6) get to roll their support in the final ritual and have to achieve together with the player a certain amount of successes. Why not let them auto succeed? The failure in the chase is achieved, when the group gets stuck for two rounds at the same obstacle and half a page is dedicated to read aloud texts for these failures. However, it just didn’t happen in my run? Several Endings where the PCs did all the work but others get to land the final blow on a resurrected Demon Lord. “We need at least 3 artefacts but 5 would make the ritual easier” – less than three artefacts gives a -2 penalty to ritual checks and having all five does not do anything.
5. “The ending of this ritual is dependent not just on the direct successes in the ritual, but also other choices throughout the scenario. As such, GMs need to take care to ensure that the PCs get the ending that their actions have guided them toward” – Wrong. The only things mattering are whether Hesla has been turned and how much luck was included in the final rolls

This one hit differently than most of the rest of Season 6 for me.

As a high-level scenario, I went into it worried that we'd be in for another 6+ hour slog, but the adventure started out with a sense of urgency and menace that built up the atmosphere rather well. There was some roleplaying in with the skill checks that helped build that up even more before we got into the first combat, which was a monster of a fight.

That fight (spoilers ahead) was the BBEG encounter right away, and it was masterfully crafted. It's hard to make a single-enemy fight interesting, especially for a full party of 6 PCs, but this one delivered. I don't like the map choice (see my review of 6-16 for reasons why). It was pretty and evocative of the scene being described, but its actual available space for use in combat by PCs and NPCs was extremely limiting and made the battle feel cramped. That said, this ended up being a minor complaint because the fight was just that good.

Our party was split 3/3 on whether to kill or spare Hesla, and it came down to a coin flip.

The chase was also great in that it wasn't too long, and you could feel the gravitas of the moment because as we had our first failure, the GM described things going wrong elsewhere in the city, which forced us to spend lots of hero points to make sure we didn't fail a second time (though he told us later what might have happened if we did, making us feel good about this decision).

The second fight wasn't difficult with lots of AoE casters, but I can see what it's meant to feel like: overwhelming swarms on the campus of the Grand Lodge. It was also well-designed because it had a good balance to it and didn't feel like it dragged at all. I forgot to ask the GM if it had an exit/timer mechanic at the end based on the flavor text or not, but if it did, that's another plus in my book for making sure the scenario keeps moving and doesn't bog down.

Then the ritual and the "epic conclusion" which I won't spoil, since it can go a bunch of different ways depending upon your party's play style, choices, and rolls. This reminds me of Mass Effect 3 a little bit, where you get to choose your ending, but the game still has the same epilogue (mostly). This is a good thing, and I think taking the time to spell out each possibility gives players much-needed agency after the rest of Season 6 ham-handing things.

Our GM reported only a few minor typos here and there, and no major stat block errors or mistakes, which is sadly a metric that needs to be checked for these days when writing a review, but one I'm glad this scenario seems to pass.

Overall, I'd rate this one a 4.5 out of 5, but since I can only point to one issue I didn't like (flip mat choice for BBEG fight), I'm going to round up to a 5/5, a rarity for me in that this is two scenarios in a row I rated 5* in a row (this and 6-99). So I guess if nothing else this year, Season 6 at least ended strong?

Maybe it is time for me to give up. I did not like the theme for this season when it started, but particularly towards the end, I am starting to really dislike existing characters in the Society.

Played a character based on redemption and thus bit my lip and did not kill the BBEG of this season, but I am really regretting it. Might have to rework or retire the character.

One of the things I personally liked this season was that the gods do not support the BBEG of this season, I appreciated that.

I guess you might have a better time if you liked this season, but ... that does not apply to me.
The callbacks and preparation just felt like busywork, and in general, I had a pretty bad time playing this one.
As I was just a player, I did not notice a lot of the issues that the GM has to face, so I can't really comment on them.

Edit. I realize that this review might not be as useful or actionable, but I have been playing Pathfinder Society since PFS1 and it is rough to no longer recognize established characters, and in general, to see a storytelling direction like this.