PFS #24: Decline of Glory

[kwixson]

This module is great, but impossibly long as a society module if the players seize upon the roleplay aspects at all. There are also a few plot holes that could be neatly plugged with a couple simple, and largely cosmetic fixes.

fixes:

The players could burn a lot of time in Railford just playing through the villager's suspicions, and even more with dealing with Jessup, the ghoul in waiting. To make this faster, make these changes:

On the hillock pairs of townsfolk mirror the Taldan soldiers with watches of their own, taking cover behind short barricades of barrels. The PCs encounter Dalard as they make their way up the hill. Dalard sees how they deal with the Taldan phalanx, and unless they talk their way through, any suspicions he might have are satisfied, making his attitude indifferent.

With Dalard, and Bloodknuckles, and Jessup to contend with there are too many characters. The fix is to make Dalard an old friend of Iodon who settled Railford and built the inn. Thus, he is "Bloodknuckles" of Bloodknuckle's Inn, rather than Synee. Eliminate Synee from the story. Also, Jessup is dead by the time the players arrive, his corpse in the basement of the distillery to ambush the party as a ghoul when they return if not properly disposed of before leaving. Dalard can relate Jessup's story.

The mod doesn't really address how, once the PCs make it in to Railford, that they can easily move out of town to go in search of Becher without provoking an encounter with the phalanx again. To remedy this, dispose of the cottage within Railford, leaving the tunnel into the cellar of the distillery to connect with a small stone building just beyond the phalanx outside of Railford, marking the start of the trail to the caves. This makes sense as something that might actually exist for use by the original builders.

The flow of the story, why Becher doesn't know where the deeds are, but then he does and goes after them, and his falling out with his father and other points of the backstory, it doesn't work for me. What makes more sense is if Dalard is Iodon's friend, and was a witness to Iodon's will in which he bequeathed the property to the Pathfinder Society instead of his son. Dalard knows where the deeds are kept and has the key to the strongbox. Until the Taldan imperialists arrive Dalard kept the location of the deeds secret in anticipation of a Pathfinder's eventual arrival to claim them. Desperate to keep Railford out of Taldan control, Dalard reveals to Becher the location of the strongbox, warns him it is trapped and instructs Becher to return to Railford with it so they can open it together. Dalard intends to keep an eye on the deeds, and after taking them from Grald, take them from Becher for safekeeping. Dalard does not know the deeds will require Becher's signature. If Dalard is made helpful, he gives the key to the Pathfinders before they set out for the caves, otherwise he will relate the full story and open the box with the key only if he and Becher survive the zombie invasion.

The miles long tunnel from the caves back to Railford doesn't make sense. Scrap it and put Becher in the alcove behind the barricade in the back office. Don't start the zombie attack until after they have found Becher there. They defeat the zombies and escape the caves by the same route they entered, and are harried by what they perceive as an overwhelming zombie horde while they race back to Railford with Becher in tow. This mechanism is necessary to get the players to shortcut what is otherwise a temptation to overplay a fun (because Becher is drunk and funny and sad) encounter. When the roleplay with Becher in the caves goes long, that's when the party hears more zombies coming -- a lot of zombies. And Marsh Mist. Make it creepy and foreboding, to build tension here. At this point in the scenario that tension is really needed and lacking in its original form.

To reflect these changes I rewrote a piece of the Getting Started scene. Consider replacing the middle paragraph of the box text with the following:

---
Setting out glasses and pouring a strong-smelling wine from a green bottle labeled "Railford", the venture-captain proposes a toast. "To Iodon Railford, Pathfinder and brewer of this fine cup: may his Wayfinder guide him to his rest." Osprey drinks, and looks silently into his cup a moment before saying, "Our brother has given us a great gift, leaving to the Society his winery and the surrounding lands in his will. Before we can move in, however, we must have the properly certified deeds of ownership, which we believe remain at the distillery in the custody of his son, Becher. Your job is to find him and convince him to hand over the deeds. He might resist. He was shunned by his father, after all. You may try to entice him with our assurance he will be allowed to remain to make his spirits. As long as we are free to establish a lodge on the premises, we will not interfere."
---

[thelesuit]

kwixson wrote:

This module is great, but impossibly long as a society module if the players seize upon the roleplay aspects at all. There are also a few plot holes that could be neatly plugged with a couple simple, and largely cosmetic fixes.

** spoiler omitted **...

Most of this seems really useful.

However there is a slight flaw with this...

Spoiler:

kwixson wrote:

The mod doesn't really address how, once the PCs make it in to Railford, that they can easily move out of town to go in search of Becher without provoking an encounter with the phalanx again. To remedy this, dispose of the cottage within Railford, leaving the tunnel into the cellar of the distillery to connect with a small stone building just beyond the phalanx outside of Railford, marking the start of the trail to the caves. This makes sense as something that might actually exist for use by the original builders.

In Act 5 the PCs are holed-up in the Distillery. With your suggestion, they would be able to merely slip out of town through the tunnel that now connects the Distillery to the small stone building.

I agree though, the whole variable permeability of the Phalanx's cordon seems contrived as does the 2 mile tunnel dry tunnel under the swamp connecting the Barrel Aging Caves to the Stone Cottage outside of Railford.

Suggestions would be welcome.

CJ

[Charlie Bell]

I ran this last weekend. It took 8 hours because

Spoiler:

after bushwhacking one of the cordon groups, the 7 PC party decided to hide in the bushes and ambush EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE of the 4 reinforcement groups. And they did, quite easily, no losses. I had to hold Grald back and handwave in some more troops for the siege of the distillery because if there's no outside threat to the town, the adventure's premise breaks down.

The ghouls in the Barrel-Aging Caves fight was fun, because I had the ghouls stay underwater, granting them improved cover (+8 AC) from attacks made above the surface. The party eventually figured out they'd be easier to hit from underwater and started using aid another to boost attack rolls.

[Cody Landis]

I had an uncomfortable few minutes in the tavern when two of my players were trying to gain evidence of Dallard's Andoran ties. They tried several things but could not figure out how to find the tattoo. Finally they came up with two plans. The first was to lure him outside and club him and then look. The second was to seduce him and check when he disrobed. The problem with the second was that no one in the party could do it except for the male alchemist who drank an elixir of disguise self. The next few minutes were a little odd because I am male and he is male and we kinda had to RP a seduction/sex act. I quickly said that they found the tattoo and moved on. My players are pretty sharp but they thought that asking the barkeep would violate the stricture that Dallard couldn't know they were looking.

[Einarr Víðarr]

I'm glad to see other GMs are reporting this running long. I had read that some groups had played through this in 3-5 hours. Seeing that people have taken 8 hours with this scenario makes me feel that I was on track with this.

[deusvult]

When I ran it I told them that the real world 4 hour time slot was the in-world deadline for when...

Spoiler:

the BBEG's army would move in. Yes, the army is sooo big the lot of you have no chance to repel them. No, we won't roleplay it if you try anyway.

I didn't tell them this part, but of course the above doesn't preclude the fun three way showdown with said army the PCs get to enjoy with the walking dead.

It did a wonderful wonderful job of keeping the the players focused on the mission goals & racing to keep on track/on time.

[The Halfling Cavalier]

Just ran this scenario for a group of mid-level characters. The group consisted of:

Human Fighter 5, Two-Weapon Specilization
Human Fighter 5, Two-Handed Weapon Specilization
Half-Orc Barbarian 3
Half-Orc Samurai 3
Witch 4

Spoiler:

They absolutely blew through this scenario in 3 hours, 20 minutes flat, and that was with a couple of 5-minute breaks in there. The Ghouls and poisonous plants never stood a chance. Never even managed to get ghoul fever on any one of the PCs. The Taldan officer died via a critical hit from the Samurai in the very first round of combat. It was really fun to run, but my group should have definitely played Tier 6-7

[Eric Clingenpeel]

Yeah, Pudge and Sam by themselves probably could have handled the combat. Its not that difficult of a scenario to begin with, but I know those two. But did they have fun? :)

[Jiggy]

Looks like I'm running this on Sunday. Has it been converted to PFRPG? Anything I should look out for? Sounds like there's a potential for running long, so I'll keep an eye on time. Also sounds like there's a potential for running short if folks are combat-strong, so I guess I'll have to tweak the pacing on the fly.

Any other tips?

[Sir_Wulf]

Jiggy wrote:

Looks like I'm running this on Sunday. Has it been converted to PFRPG? Anything I should look out for? Sounds like there's a potential for running long, so I'll keep an eye on time. Also sounds like there's a potential for running short if folks are combat-strong, so I guess I'll have to tweak the pacing on the fly.

Any other tips?

When I've run this, I've had the undead in the barrel aging caves hidden underneath the surface of the water: It really creeps players out when they don't know how many undead they face or where they are. At one point, I also had zombies grappling flatfooted PCs and attempting to bite. This really messed with people's heads. ("Wait: Trying to bite? I thought these were zombies! WHAT ARE THESE THINGS!?")

[Doug Miles]

James is right, play up the barrel aging caves by not having all the undead just rush the PCs. I learned the hard way when I drew out the entire map then realized the encounter played out within 20 feet of the entrance. Due to the movement penalties in water, the undead would slowly cluster around the rubble at the bottom of the stairs and end up channel-fodder.

Have the undead remain submerged in the deeper parts of the cave. Allow the PCs to get a round or two into the cave then have the floating barrels start to move around as if something unseen had bumped them while moving on an intercept course. It should prove more memorable that way.

Also, a lot of tables try and avoid the act with the bog screamers and fungi. They don't realize they'll miss out on treasure. Give them a chance to spot something in the water that piques their interest, otherwise they'll say "Why would I walk into an encounter that nets me jack squat? I'm circling around giving the screamers a wide berth."

Have a lot of fun with Beecher Railford. I like to practice a slurring voice and wild mood swings. Have players pre-roll Will saves versus the suggestion trap and fake deed. Prepare a note to pass to the player explaining the compulsion s/he's under so the other players won't easily catch on. It can lead to some great role-playing.

What does the deed look like? Think about this, the scenario doesn't ever describe it but your players will likely ask the question. If you are going to fool them with the fake deed you need to make it sound authentic when they ask about it. I'd like to hear what other GMs have imagined.

Be prepared for the players to go off-script. Let them. Don't try to reel them back. Just improvise. I've had players pose as Taldan military officers, join forces with the Phalanx and later betray them. I've had them give the fake deed to the Grald and send him off to Oparra.

The Andoran faction mission is very tricky, you may need to do some extra work explaining to the players the success requirement. You may also want to develop more personality and background on Dalard Fritch.

[Dan Luckett]

My group surrendered to the phalanx...thinking they were the legitimate authority there.

[Woran]

Total thread necro.

I am running this on thursday, and I had a question about the poison:

poison:

Poison Needle Trap CR 1
Type mechanical; Search DC 20; Disable Device DC 17
EFFECTS:
Trigger touch; Reset repair
Effect Atk +17 (1 hp damage plus poison needle);
Poison blue whinnis, DC 14 Fortitude save resists (poison only), 1 Con/
unconsciousness

How does this actually work? Does someone get 1 con damage and then falls unconsious? Does someone keep getting con damage untill they save or fall uncousious? (pretty much meaning they would be dead)?

The poison is different, but I dont know if we can update this to PF rules or should stick with the 3.5.

[Kristen Gipson]

PRD wrote:

BLUE WHINNIS

Type poison, injury; Save Fortitude DC 14

Frequency1/round for 2 rounds

Initial Effect 1 Con damage; Secondary Effect unconsciousness for 1d3 hours; Cure 1 save

Blue Whinnis is a poison with initial and secondary effects. The initial (1 con dmg) happens when the the 1st fortitude save is failed. The secondary (unconscious 1d3 hrs) happens when the 2nd fortitude save is failed.

The PC will only ever take con dmg once.

[Woran]

Ok, thanks, the wording in the scenario had me really confused, and I didnt know if I could use the description from the PRD.

[Kristen Gipson]

Guide to Organized Play pg 33 wrote:

Season 0 scenarios were written under the 3.5 rules set of the world’s oldest roleplaying game, before the release of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. If a creature in the scenario also appears in the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary,Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2, or Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 3 and maintains the same CR between both rules sets, you may use the Pathfinder RPG stats in place of the 3.5 stats. This is the only substitution allowed in these scenarios.

This particular scenario is written with 3.5 rules. Posions don't have a CR and since the DC and the effects are the same, it is just fine to use the updated version where the wording is a little clearer.

[Woran]

Well, that was my problem. The poison itself doesnt have a CR, but the trap has. I was unsure if you could adapt the poison as its part of the trap, and the trap has CR.

[Ascalaphus]

Well, Woran just ran this for us. It was good fun although we did go overtime, so some narrative acceleration was needed.

As a Taldan paladin with the Title prestige award, this was very nice to play because it was all about setting your own country straight.

I do think one reason the adventure ran long for us was the bogs; having movement restricted to about a single square per Move action made the combats go much slower. It really sets the tone of the whole thing taking place in a dreary swamp, but the double-difficult deep bogs were overkill I think.

@Woran: I'm reading through the adventure now and I'm a bit confused; you mentioned before that you couldn't use PF stats for the monsters because they have different CR in PF, but when I look them up they're exactly the same, at least for the Violet Fungus and the Shambling Mound. I still think the way you handled the Mound's Grab was a bit weird, although since you didn't start using Constrict heavily from the start, the end result was probably about equally dangerous.

[FLite]

Arise thread and live again! :)

I have played this, but it was a long, long time ago. I don't remember anyone even suggesting defending the distillary, I believe we ran outside full of righteous wrath and walked all over the incoming "army" (And the undead that followed it.)

The distillary siege seems like it could easily run all night. Anyone have any experience with this?

(Also, it seems highly implausible that the soldier group breaking through the wall could possibly succeed in ten rounds, and it is not at all possible for the ghouls to break through the wall. ???)

[FLite]

Just to make sure I understand this, the final encounter is 8 waves of attackers that the PCs have to fight? For a total of 33 NPCs at tier 1-2? (only 4 waves if the ghouls kill the people?)

[FLite]

Also, it says the pcs can barricade the doors, adding the hitpoints of the object used to the doors. But it doesn't say what objects are available, what their hit points are, what strength it takes to move them, or what sort of action I is to reinforce the doors.

[Woran]

scenario text:

Stage 1: During this stage, Grald and his soldiers attempt to force their way into the distillery intent on
defeating Becher and his allies.
Pairs of phalanx soldiers surround the distillery at four different locations marked on the map.
Grald’s group positions itself at the front doors and initiates the siege, attempting to force his way in by attacking the doors.

The way I read this, there are three groups of two NPCs, and one group of three (two soldiers and Grald).
They will start attacking in waves, yes, but it means those four groups start two rounds apart from each other. So first Gralds groups attacks, then the group of two at point B, two rounds later the group at point C, and so forth:

scenario text:

Two rounds later, a second
group attacks at entry point B. Every Two rounds after
that, the next group attacks entry point C and so forth
every two rounds, until all groups are attacking the
distillery.

So no new groups arrive, it just means a group already outside starts attacking.

There are no items listed for barricading the doors. Probably because players can get creative. You could make up some yourself beforehand using this table: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/additionalRules.html#table-7-13-substanc e-hardness-and-hit-points

[FLite]

Except that

Spoiler:

everywhere else, the scenario says "group" and the encounter stats call for 4 soldiers.

and the block for what to do if the PCs ally with Grald says:

If the PCs decide to side with Grald, the GM should simply
reverse the encounters such that they are forced to defend
the distillery from the townsfolk first, then undead. The GM
should alter the encounters such that the groups at each
entrance contain 4 townies and 4 ghouls to compensate for
the PCs new soldier allies.

Also, if it is a pair of two at each door, the Encounter details for tier 3-4 (use the encounter stats for tier 1-2 but use 8 soldiers instead of 4) makes no sense at all.

Word choice in this scenario is incredibly bad. For example:

"he convenes with them the next morning to sequester their help."

I can work out what it means, but convenes is just a bad choice of words, and sequester makes no sense in that context.

[Woran]

I didnt even read as far down as the statblocks, as the text says PAIR of soldiers, so I just assumed two. Its been a year since I GMd it.

I'm honestly lost. Usually when a statblock calls our a certain number, that's the total number. So it would mean igore words like pair, and have a single soldier per entry point for tier 1-2 and 6-7 (as the stablocks list 4) and two soldiers per entry point for tier 3-4, as it says, to use the statblocks from tier 1-2 but double them to 8.

[FLite]

Yeah, but then the "what to do if..." Block says 4 & 4 at each entrance. So yeah, I'm lost too.

I also don't see how the ghouls are supposed to break through a hardness 8 wall...

[Woran]

With all this confusion, I would just look at how your party is doing. If they are at their last legs, keep it at one or two per entrance. If they are going strong, just use four.

I think the ghouls are ment to use the holes the guards made.

[FLite]

The guards have four rounds to deal 60 hit points to a hardness 8 wall. Eight guards would have to all roll 8 on 1d8+2 every round for 4 rounds to break through... And on round 5 the ghouls arrive.

[Woran]

The guards have bows. They would not need to destroy the whole wall. Just make a hole and start shooting trough.

[Ascalaphus]

I wouldn't focus too closely on the mechanics the guards use to get through the walls.

In practice the guards have lackluster builds, and only at L1-2 are their STR bows + Favored Enemy (Human) dangerous. At mid and high tier they really need the PCs to save them from the ghouls.

The siege against the ghouls is doable, but the PCs really do need that terrain advantage. Individual ghouls are killable but if they get to swarm you the paralysis can get out of hand fast. You don't want to use the distillery to keep them out entirely, but you want to use it to make sure they come in one or two at a time so you can kill them, rather than all at once.

[FLite]

Okay, so having reread this like five times, I am going to go back on my previous assertions. The sidebar for what to do if the party changes sides says change the attackers to 4 villagers and 4 ghouls at each gate "to compensate for their new soldier allies". Clearly at tier 3-4 you would need a lot more than 4 ghouls and 4 villagers per gate to compensate for 32 soldiers, so clearly it is supposed to be "divide the soldiers among the entry points."

That said, I think I am going to interpret the "when they break through, all the soldiers rush in" to mean that once they break through anywhere, the soldiers from the rest of the entry points run toward that point to get in. That way I am not left with ghouls fruitlessly pounding away at a wall they can't get through.

[FLite]

That actually went better than I expected.

all first level
half orc Skald
half orc Bloodrager
??? gunslinger
??? druid w/ raptor
(Human) Kyra

In the first combat:

One ranger failed the DC 10 handle animal to get his dog, at which point the party blood rager made a handle animal check to turn it back on him and rolled a 20...

The were *not* amused by:

the leeches. They had no salt, and 3-6 hp of damage was not amusing.

getting them not to bypass:

the shrieker so they didn't lose out on the loot was hard, I let them get a glimpse of the body in the water, and they tried to fish it out and set off the shrieker.

In the cave:

They didn't have disable device, but I let them use knowledge engineering, since that is basically what the collapse is.
The Ghoul in the rubble died fast. The staggered zombies moving one square a turn just died horribly.

They opened the door:

in the distillery to show the bad guys they had the deed, which was a mistake... They wound up fighting all 4 rangers at once, instead of scattered around for 2 rounds before closing the door and going back into siege mode. 4 human bane archers against half-orcs, took down both half orcs in the first round. In the end they stood off the two rangers who held back long enough for the ghouls to show up, at which point they let the rangers in to help hold off the guards, retreated back to form a choke point and waited for the zombies to break in. During the first part of the siege, the gunslinger broke open the chest, and they healed up the son to wake him up to sign it. (They broke open the chest and ordered him to grab the deed, so the fake deed targeted him)

and then everything went to chaos...:

The skald asked the son for the deed so he could see it (And with 2 hit points left, he handed it to him.) The skald failed his save. He started to sign it. The blood rager knocked it from his hand, and the gunslinger grabbed it, failed his save and tried to sign it, eventually they got it back to the son, went back to the chest to see if anything else was in it, found the false bottom and were like... Okay, suddenly that makes so much more sense...