Hi Neil,
First off, I must say I’m deeply sorry for you and your friends and I sincerely hope this bad experience won’t taint too lastingly your outlook on PFS or lead to a full rejection of PFS… I already feel bad enough as it is…
Yes, I can see how Perils of the Pirate Pact could be a killer to a group of level 1, especially one with only 4 PCs… and no cleric… But then again, maybe not so much more then many of the other tier 1-3 scenarios.
The important point here is that--as I’m sure we can all agree--first level groups are on a world of their own, an probably deserve tailored adventures. I do believe this is what the hinted GenCon linked adventures will be about--that and presenting the setting to any newcomers. Isn’t it the “PFS One-Page-Sheet” that talks about “a beginner series launching soon”?
The way I see it, this is also a side effect of the Organized Play framework where the self-evident need for uniformity and consistency restricts DMs and scenario authors alike from tailoring adventures to a given group the way one could in home campaign games (though, even there, attitudes and modus operandi vary.)
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Sounds pretty bad, but you know they *keep* the XP even if they fled right?
I'd suggest for low level characters to get a ranged weapon to keep them from getting into full attack range with the nasty opponents.
The 'lady' was built to deal death, loads of HP (which makes no sense outside of 'I need to take a hit'), 4 meat shields to block movement, and a magic boom stick that when used up does a minimum damage high enough to seriously wound a party of 6 barbarians.
I'd suggest dropping her HP to 12 (making her a sorc rogue instead of rogue D6 sorc, and no bears endurance nonsense). It'd make more sense for her to double up on Cure Mod given that Bear's End is just theoretical HP like a barbarian's rage. Especially since *neither* are in the chronicle!
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I don't see a problem here. A group of four lvl 1 characters that doesn't include a cleric really needs to plan ahead and strive to stay alive. This is nothing new. Either that or the DM needs to "softball" some of the encounters.
Also, the players participating in such a game should be aware of the possibility of a sensible retreat (e.g. running away when faced with insurmountable odds). That's definitely what I would have done at the scene you just described. Run for the hills! Failing that, call parley. I don't really see the need for Riverbane to kill the Pathfinders if she gets what she wants. (Yes, I am aware the module has a scripted outcome of "Kill them all!". Unnecessary in my opinion. There should always be a way out for glib-tongued scallywags that doesn't involve blood and death.)
There is no honor in dying for nothing, and as someone already pointed out, the characters get XP whether or not they finish the mission.
Venture-Captain, Arizona—Tucson
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1.) They're dealing with river pirates, people even less trustworthy than Pathfinders.
2.) Riverbane had already been the leader and "sole survivor" of an ill-fated expedition: That would make anyone that I game with suspicious.
3.) The Pathfinders already saw Riverbane's wand and the ruthless way she dispatched downed foes. The way she sent the Pathfinders into danger while holding back her own men might also have concerned them.
4.) The party rescued battered survivors; their half-conscious babbling definitely should have warned the Pathfinders.
Not every fight is best handled head-on. Sometimes deceit, treachery, or evasion are the best options, especially in a party with a bard.
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I just played this last night so finally I can read the thread and make comments. Really, this has nothing to do with the scenario so much as the question the original poster presented.
Was it fair?
I'm less concerned with 'fairness' than some. I'd rather ask the question, "Did everyone enjoy themselves?". This is a game after all. I want my legal system to be fair. I want my taxes to be fair. Fair's fine when it comes to real life matters, but I want my games to be fun. If the players didn't enjoy being TPKed, and as a result they walk away from the Pathfinder Society table and go play something they can have fun with, what's the sense in asking if it was fair?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not endorsing an "Everybody's a winner because everyone participated!" agenda. I've said it many times, I personally enjoy getting thrashed. I personally enjoy the nailbiting encounters where every single standard action, move action & even free action counts & is critical to survival. That's me. I've had 18 PC deaths in the last four years. What I am saying is *KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE*. You, the GM, are an entertainer. Did your audience get what they came for or do they want their "money" back?
If the players who got TPKed didn't feel like they had a chance the way the game was run, and as a result don't start new characters & try again then really your time as a GM was wasted too (unless you get a kick out of killing PCs--which I don't think is the case here). Any time that players return to the PFS table for another game means their last GM did it right.
Next time the game unfolds as it did for the original poster, bend the rules. If there's a table of 1st level PCs without a cleric, I'll hand one of them a pre-gen cleric to run. Is that legal under the org play rules? No. Does that help a sub-optimal party of new PCs make it through the scenario and also *enjoy* themselves? Yes. I'd also suggest having Lady Riversbane take the PCs prisoner rather than kill them. The PCs would be beaten savagely, robbed and then ransomed back to the Pathfinder Society. These are pirates after all. Where's the sense in killing someone when you can ransom them or sell them into slavery?
Finally, I apologize if any of the above came off as critical of the OP. I know that's like Ricky Bobby telling his boss off after prefacing it "With all due respect..." believing that those four words make anything that comes afterward appropriate. Sorry for the bile!
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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(of course then you would be giving up access to the wand of magic missiles which is the best loot I have found yet in any of the scenarios).
Actually, that's not the way PFS scenarios work. You can encounter the woman, avoid the woman, even break the and during play, and it will still be purchasable as treasure afterwards.
That's not exactly correct.
From pg. 22 of the guide book:
"Every chronicle has all of the loot found during the scenario recorded on it. (The chronicle will never include items found that are already available to you to purchase—see below.) The Game Master will check which items you and your fellow Pathfinders discovered and each of these will be available for purchase immediately by all party members. Items not discovered in play will be blacked out or lined out by the GM."
So if you avoid the encounter with the final boss entirely and she was the source of the Wand of Magic Missiles, your GM should line out that item on the chronicle sheet since you didn't find it.
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Well as a DM in most DnD games you got to be mindful of what your party can do. I am never a fan out killing PC's (and I have killed A LOT) but its level 1 game and TPK's can happen.
If I was GM i would have suggested somehow in game that a "rest" break here and there. SO you could get them to take a rest here and there assuming the adventure was time line driven. To be fair I am not familiar with PFS #17.
You did say that you group made mistakes and at level one that will cost a PC and that should be understood by the party. There has to be consquances.
Some of the PFS are plain old rough. My group just did #3 Murder on the silken Caravan last night and we all all level 1. I am super glad we had 9 players. Me and the other party cleric just couldn't keep up with the last encounter. We won, no one died (thanks to a lucky roll of stabilzation check) but I have no clue how a four man level 1 group would live.
The PFS is fair because we all got to go through it. Just keep it up and hopefully your group gets better and learn from there mistakes. From what I read of your post you didn't do anything wrong.
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My views on TPKs and killing characters in general are to avoid them if at all possible, especially with players new to either roleplaying or Pathfinder.
No one likes being killed, no one likes starting a character over. Killing someone in their first session is a good way to kill Pathfinder in your area imo. Sorry, but it's true. I used to think realism (or playing by the rules or "being fair") was more important than fun, but it's not. Your game can be both fair and unfun.
Doug and others had some good ways to bend the rules.
Saying that, I'd bend the rules less for veterans, but I'd still avoid killing someone where possible.
If you have an imbalanced party in the future with less than the required amount of players, and you don't want to add an NPC to help or bend the rules a bit, perhaps it might even be better to not play, rather than dive into an inevitable TPK.
Anyway, hopefully everything is still ok and everyone will try PF again. Btw I don't blame you for playing the scenario "as is", but I'd personally like DMs to be more forgiving to PF noobs than harsh.
Fortunately, in this case, it wasn't a group of new players. I've been running Pathfinder Society on nearly a monthly basis since October of 2008, and all of us were experienced players. Between us, I believe we average 15 to 20 years of Role Play experience. All of us were, and are, used to the concept of character death. That said, mistakes WERE definitely made. However, the issue still stands that, in the opinions of both myself and Neil that the Wand of Magic Missiles, when combined with the other Pirate Pact NPCs (designed to keep the party busy,) is extremely deadly. One of the reasons Magic Missile is one of the most important first level spells is that it is an automatic 1D4+1 damage to the target, no chance to miss and no save. In this case, there is no way, particularly as debilitated as the party was after the encounter with the Ettercaps, that we could have won the battle.
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Ran this mod Saturday, vs a party of four players(Oskar Sor2, Malendaar Wiz2, Sonril Clr2 and Vogun Ran4). I thought they would not make it at Tier 3-4 and we played 1-2 instead.
One of the Taldan player wisely decided to purchase Antitoxin (inside info from the Taldan mission notes!)and so did other players...
The only difficult fight was on Act 4: the one ettercap remaining was able to down Vogun thanx to its 3 attacks / round and some good rolls by the GM, (a chance we were playing Tier 1-2!)
The other fights were easily won with the aid of color spray and other spells. The party rested two times during the adventure and was able to regain spells effectively.
The funny thing happened after Act 1 when suspicion was raised against Lady Riverbane. A very good CHA check allowed Malendaar to spend the night with the Lady in her cabin. Nothing to be found there as a proof for treason though.
This is surely not a good idea to try any PFS scenario with a party of 4 level one characters, but certainly not this one! So, when a GM knows in advance he will run vs a very weak party, maybe its a good idea to choose an appropriate scenario.
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I ran this for a sub-optimal party at tier 3-4 on Sunday. They were heavy on healing, but very light on damage. To give an idea, the full-blooded cleric critted with his dagger dealing 1 nonlethal damage in ACT II. Seriously.
Even though they weren't an ideal party, they still managed to walk through the first 3 Acts. The difference between tiers 1-2 and 3-4 is so minor, it's pathetic. (my rolling for the first 3 acts didn't help either)
Then we come to Act IV. They even manage to spot one of the Ettercaps hiding in a corner and get a surprise round that the spend buffing. That was the last good round for the PCs. The Ettercaps used their web to effectively separate the party with the only PC that passed for a tank singled out and webbed up. They beat on this poor tank for round after round with the rest of the party almost unable to deal any damage, they spent their time channeling healing to keep the tank alive. I am being quite literal when I say that the tank was knocked unconcious SEVEN times in this encounter. "I'm not dead yet!" Salvation finally came when the gnome's riding dog stopped rolling 3's to escape the webbing and then critted an Ettercap. It then promptly chomped on the second one. At this point the party was nearly out of any resources, and that was before the cleric set off the block trap that dealt almost max damage!
Had they left the shrine and faced Riverbane, it would have been a TPK. They asked about setting up camp in the shrine (after burning all the webs!), and I didn't have a problem with it. If I wanted it to be "fair," or "real" I would have had Riverbane order a thug to confirm the party's demise, resulting in Act V being triggered, and everyone at the table dying. That's not fun for anyone.
I think the players enjoyed themselves and I enjoyed running the scenario, and at the end of that day that's all that matters.
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This was my first mod at PaizoCon UK, and we also went in without a cleric.
That's part of the risk, though, when playing in a convention environment, with a random draw for each table.
I was knocked into the negatives twice, one time dropping from minus 3 to minus 9 before being given a potion, despite having the trait that doubled my stabilisation chance. What a start!
What I noticed, during the weekend, was that I saw a LOT more PCs built for self-sufficiency, since unlike a home game with their regular group, they couldn't count on always having a fellow Pathfinder with just the right class.
I don't think I've seen so many Heal checks! (Something that rarely happens, when there's a cleric with Cure Minor/Cure Light in every party).
I also saw a LOT of PCs with a few ranks in Use Magic Device, a skill which I normally see left till later, when a Rogue can spam 8 or more ranks into it at once.
And a few players buying items that would be useful for their next group, rather than for themselves personally. In my second game, our other new Rogue (Urisen) pulled out 'Riverbane's wand', which I don't believe he could even use, and lent it to the cash-strapped Wizard.
I think the players need to adopt a new mindset, when they don't know what the next mission is, or who they'll be with.
I know a lot has changed with the rules from April til now and between 3.5 and PFRPG, and I know that PFS games are run differently than normal games, but whatever happened to the standard DM-run NPC to fill the gap, if there is one, in a party's setup? I can't even remember the last time I played in a D&D game where the DM did not have an NPC tagging along "just in case".
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I know a lot has changed with the rules from April til now and between 3.5 and PFRPG, and I know that PFS games are run differently than normal games, but whatever happened to the standard DM-run NPC to fill the gap, if there is one, in a party's setup? I can't even remember the last time I played in a D&D game where the DM did not have an NPC tagging along "just in case".
Keep in mind that your own experiences in gaming can go out the window in an organized play environment. My group had a series of 3rd edition house rules that were sensible and worked well for us, which I had to discard when playing in a "Living" campaign.
I think your experience is probably in the minority, and the "standard" DM-run NPC is not standard, even if it's something your home group uses all the time. Personally, I don't know that I've ever seen the DM run a "just in case" NPC for more than one or two sessions, and then only rarely--maybe one game out of 20. And even then, they're usually secretly villains or incredibly inept.
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I know a lot has changed with the rules from April til now and between 3.5 and PFRPG, and I know that PFS games are run differently than normal games, but whatever happened to the standard DM-run NPC to fill the gap, if there is one, in a party's setup? I can't even remember the last time I played in a D&D game where the DM did not have an NPC tagging along "just in case".Keep in mind that your own experiences in gaming can go out the window in an organized play environment. My group had a series of 3rd edition house rules that were sensible and worked well for us, which I had to discard when playing in a "Living" campaign.
I think your experience is probably in the minority, and the "standard" DM-run NPC is not standard, even if it's something your home group uses all the time. Personally, I don't know that I've ever seen the DM run a "just in case" NPC for more than one or two sessions, and then only rarely--maybe one game out of 20. And even then, they're usually secretly villains or incredibly inept.
I'll go a step further. Even in home games I've seen a lot of resistance to the idea of the just in case NPC character.It's usually a novice DM that uses one. Nobody likes the DMPC. Experienced players especially tend to dislike this character and try to lock him in a locker or strand him on an island or something. It is up to the actual PC's to save the day or fail trying.
Home games tend to be balanced towards the characters that are playing in them.Organized play especially is different in this regards. Rarely do you have the same NPCs that you had to deal with the mod before. You don't always have a balanced table. The mods are not going to cater to your table balance. You do need to build a character that can do a job well. If that primary job is not dealing damage you also need a reliable way to do damage. You also need to be able to do some sort of first aid because you can't count on having the healing cleric around.
Keep in mind that your own experiences in gaming can go out the window in an organized play environment. My group had a series of 3rd edition house rules that were sensible and worked well for us, which I had to discard when playing in a "Living" campaign.
Which is why I said I knew that PFS games were run differently than normal PFRPG/D&D games, of which I have yet to be able to enjoy. But the OP did not sound like he was running the module in an organized setting, but rather more casually at someone's home. If the game was not for PFS XP, then I was assuming he could have sent along an npc cleric if he had wanted to.
I think your experience is probably in the minority, and the "standard" DM-run NPC is not standard, even if it's something your home group uses all the time. Personally, I don't know that I've ever seen the DM run a "just in case" NPC for more than one or two sessions, and then only rarely--maybe one game out of 20. And even then, they're usually secretly villains or incredibly inept.
I'll go a step further. Even in home games I've seen a lot of resistance to the idea of the just in case NPC character.It's usually a novice DM that uses one. Nobody likes the DMPC. Experienced players especially tend to dislike this character and try to lock him in a locker or strand him on an island or something. It is up to the actual PC's to save the day or fail trying.
As for my experience, I have been playing and running rpg's of various systems for almost 30 years now, in both casual campaigns as well as organized settings such as the old RPGA. I would say that nearly all the casual games had a DM-run npc as part of the party, usually to fill a gap in the party and/or to keep that character up to level with the other pc's for when another player became the DM and the npc became a pc for the former DM. Of course, organized play like the RPGA or PFS are set so that there are only pc's going though the module, and any npc's going along with the party are either there to betray them or to die or disappear so as to futher the plot.