A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 7th- through 10th-level characters.
When Gorum died, shards of his divine being rained down. One of these warshards landed in an ooze being transported outside of Oenopion. The newly-empowered creature escaped its confines and headed south towards the Mana Wastes. The Nexian forces haven't be able to deal with it, and have turned to hiring mercenaries. The Pathfinder Society learns of this chance to get their hands on another warshard, and has an arclord ally get them on the short list of candidates.
The PCs must prove their mettle over the other candidates before tracking this newly divine war ooze along the borders to the waste. What's more, the Mana Wastes themselves aren't going to make this mission any easier, and no one yet understands the full impact that warshards might have on creatures, so there's no telling the capabilities of this warooze.
Written by Michael Sayre
Scenario tags: Godsrain
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
Falls is a combat scenario that starts with a skill challenge and is filled with flavor.
I really loved the lore and the story behind this scenario and found it very intriguing. The idea of hunting a monster of this size and power is intriguing.
Although I find all skill challenges to be roll fests and a waste of time, these skill challenges had a lot of flavor, and with some tweaking could be quite fun.
The first combat was good, I’m sure it wasn’t easy for the GM to prepare, but it was enjoyable.
The final combat with the ooze didn’t last long enough and there weren’t enough tricks or special conditions. For example, if I hit it with melee, at the very least it should spray all over me because of the size, at worst engulf me for free. Imo we beat it too easily.
I believe we finished in 4 hours at high tier.
Overall: Falls is the best scenario of season 6, and although I want to give it 5 stars, in the end it’s not something I will be thinking about years from now, but it’s very good. (9/10)
We had our skill gauntlet, had a brawl with another adventuring party, trekked into the desert, and then had an EPIC battle with the (redacted) which had (redacted) special ability and even used (redacted) points when we thought we killed it! It was SO cool!
Post-mortem, we learned that our GM changed the skill gauntlet as-written to make sure we only spent about 1 hour doing skill checks (when we did the math, we realized that they saved us anywhere from 20-40 minutes by cutting material from the adventure in doing so), that the brawl required the GM to prep NPCs using like 10 different stat blocks, that the desert trek were just random encounter tables, and that one of the coolest mythic abilities the (redacted) used at the end of the scenario was something they added in to make it last longer (which we all loved, for the record) rather than written-in.
So, all in all, my own experience was that this was a fantastic adventure, but it sounds like that was largely thanks to a GM who really knew adventure design, too. Your mileage may vary.
Reviewing from the perspective of a GM, haven't played the scenario yet.
Going to keep this relatively short, but on the whole I really liked this scenario. The combats are generally interesting and against unique enemies you either don't see that often or at all elsewhere, and the setting for the scenario is a fun one (that I definitely supplemented using Mad Max Fury Road stills in my run; shoutout to Fleshforger Immortan Joe) My one complaint with the skill challenges is that I don't believe that the rewards for overacheiving felt particularly worth the party's time, and trying to imply that there was more to be earned from a puzzle room in my playthrough felt like it caused the scenario to drag a bit; otherwise the roleplay around the skill checks were generally enjoyable. There are some places that require a bit of fleshing out on the GM side if you want to add to the flavor (specifically including some descriptive passages for the breaks in the Tracking section would have been welcome) but it is fairly easy to season this scenario to a pretty fun run if you put in a bit of elbow grease, which is what I look for in a Pathfinder Society Scenario.
My primary complaint with this scenario is that everything about how it is written SCREAMS that this scenario could and SHOULD have had the Repeatable tag, for the skill check challenge that allows for varied roleplay and can be mixed up to keep things fresh on repeat playthroughs, to a fairly complex mid-scenario fight that many parties will have to handle in unique ways appropriate to their composition, to the honest-to-god Random Encounter Tables that appear in this scenario, of which it is impossible for a party to see every encounter on in a single playthrough. With the non-existence of 7-10 repeatables in Society Play up to this point, making this a Repeatable would have given players a fun way to get some more life out of their higher level PCs that have levelled out of the 3-6 range, and I would strongly hope that the Organized Play team would consider going back to this scenario in the future and adding the Repeatable tag to it for that reason. If this ever gets changed, I would consider revising my review of this scenario to a 5* even with the mild issues I have with it on account of the extra added utility it offers to Society game organizers on the whole.
GM'd as part of a PaizoCon slot, finished with 6 players playing highest subtier after 4.5 hours online. Had enough time left to go back and run one optional fight with the three players that were interested afterwards in the remaining 30 minutes of the slot. Solid experience overall, would recommend this scenario if asked.
Ring Side Report- RPG review of Pathfinder Society Scenario #6-07: A God Falls W
Basics- Oozes with godlike powers? The Godsrain has caused unexpected things like an ooze with a chunk of the god of war. Are you strong enough to fight a god? Can you prove it?.
Mechanics or Crunch- This is a short adventure with a bit of randomness built in. The basics are a skill challenge fest, then a fight, a possible fight, and lastly the main, big event fight. It’s not bad, but it’s maybe a little simple. 4/5
Theme or Fluff- There is solid stuff here, but the missing parts are a bit noticeable. The adventure has an awesome picture of an ooze city which is cool, but there are four separate test rooms and the adventure doesn't give descriptions or pictures of those rooms. That would REALLY help. The story is good, but help me help the players understand the room more. The adventure also has a filler section which is ok, but it's kind of strange to add filler. I get if you want to build out parts of the story, but the parts here just for time. That’s not as much fun as you might want. It’s good, but focus would help this adventure 3.75/5
Execution- Paizo does good books. This reads fast, has nice layout, and has most of the pieces I need for the game. I’d like more art as some of the random encounters are things I have to hunt down. Paizo puts the stats in the adventure, but not the art? Throw those in as well as this effectively has infinite pages. Also, give me more art for the adventure as above. The book is still $8.99, so I expect a bit more now. The execution is good, but needs a bit more to be great. 4.5/5
Summary- This is a good adventure, but is missing pieces to really help me make a great presentation. The skill rooms are fine, but no art and descriptions make life harder. The encounters are fine, but some filler encounters that don't build the world don’t help. The execution is good, but I need more to run this effectively. The price doesn't quite justify all the parts here. 82%
Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
I'm reading to prep this one & I've noticed in part C1 there's a Survival check with no DC given; are we expecting DC 23 for 7-8 and 26 for 9-10 as per level based DCs?
(based on 11 ratings)
