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I'm suppose to run this next week but confused about the part where Graetos takes a slave as a hostage. Does it count as a grapple or helpless on the hostage? What am I'm rolling against if the PC wants to "take the shot".
I'd rule as follows: the slave is grappled, not helpless.
The slave counts as soft cover: +4 AC (which has roughly the same effect as shooting into melee (-4 to attack)).
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I played this at Dragonflight this past weekend, where I was the level 1 amongst a table of level 4s.
For us the most dangerous thing was the Scroll Master, but we couldn't take her seriously; once she stabbed us with a scroll and we realized her archetype we just kept laughing at her until she lighting bolted the party and then we knew she had to be taken down.
The Cat and the Gold Agent at the end died to my character - it was a quirk that I rolled a crit on each of them, had a Wand of Lead Blades active at the time, and was using a Great Axe. They were 1-hit KO'd & we didn't get to experience anything about them because they hadn't gone yet.
I liked the flavour of this mod, and it was a nice idea, but there were two problems:
My Good character always takes enemies alive if possible, but there is no choice in this mod except to execute them all, as releasing them would jeopardise the mission and put the slaves at risk. We spoke to the VC (in-game) and his answer was simply to kill them. In the mod we'd played just beforehand, my character's (Pathfinder Society) faction mission was to stop the party from killing any of the enemies, so the change in approach was jarring.
The existence of the Aspis entrance, the fact that we hadn't rescued the slaves and the question over what we should do with the prisoners all gave the impression that things were left half finished. We had no clear idea of what was expected of us after the final fight and the mod kind of petered out after a great deal of discussion.
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The slave problem results from the nature of the demi-plane itself, but logically, it was going to happen. The Consortium uses slaves. They need people to do hard, backbreaking labor in a site. They're going to choose the obvious solution. That it traps their captives on the demiplane doesn't matter to them. It's the PFS that has to figure out the ethics, since that's one of the differences between the organisations. The PFS is Neutral, however, and does expedient things.
Nosig's post is a good solution, as is leaving the slaves in charge long enough to send a different group to figure out how to deal with the prisoners; in fact from talking to people playing my scenario this is by far the usual workaround. But RPing does involve some difficult decisions sometimes.
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many of my PCs are Qadirian or Osirion - and the one PFS "dig site" I can think of in a scenario had the PFS team using slaves. Part of the Andoran Faction Mission required them to get one or more of the Slaves freed.
So ... what happens when the Andoran players get stuck between this problem (I have not run this with Andorans in it). Do they kill all the prisoners? or what? Are long term prisoners slaves?
Like I said, not a problem I have faced yet....
Long term prisoners and POWs are not slaves. Otherwise, Andoran would have difficulty with their justice system and running wars. Slaves are legally chattel. Prisoners are persons who have portions, but not all, of their rights suspended, and POWs are similar. The legal problem from an Andoren perspective is that the Society is a private enterprise, and the Consortium's agents are more trespassers than military opponents.
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Long term prisoners and POWs are not slaves. Otherwise, Andoran would have difficulty with their justice system and running wars. Slaves are legally chattel. Prisoners are persons who have portions, but not all, of their rights suspended, and POWs are similar. The legal problem from an Andoren perspective is that the Society is a private enterprise, and the Consortium's agents are more trespassers than military opponents.many of my PCs are Qadirian or Osirion - and the one PFS "dig site" I can think of in a scenario had the PFS team using slaves. Part of the Andoran Faction Mission required them to get one or more of the Slaves freed.
So ... what happens when the Andoran players get stuck between this problem (I have not run this with Andorans in it). Do they kill all the prisoners? or what? Are long term prisoners slaves?
Like I said, not a problem I have faced yet....
not having a look at the Andoran justice system, I am not at all sure what they do for punishment. I have pictured a sentence system that concentrated on forms of punishment other than depriving someone of their liberty. Exile, fines, flogging, maiming, branding, and death are all punishments that do not rob someone of their freedom. I would think all these would be part of the Andoran justice system.
POWs are another matter. Ransom for example would be added to the above list of possible punishments, though most cultures that did not practice slavery just didn't take prisoners (American plains Indians for example, did not take male captives, as they had no history of slavery - as the men of the 7th Cav found out). So I would think that Andoran would just kill prisoners rather than rob them of their freedom. (Gives new meaning to the term "Set them free"!).
That seems very unlikely to me, as death is the ultimate loss of freedom. I can see Andoran doing branding, clipping, maiming, etc., I suppose. Consider that the Roman citizen (a status that directly relates to Libertas or manumission) was exempted from the death penalty except for the crime of treason. Being subject to death was a distinction that divided free men from unfree.
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I am running this later this week and one thing bugs me.
What possible in world justification is there for having a secret compartment that only a Grand Lodge member can find (their faction mission in A6) ? It magically knows that the person looking is Grand Lodge?
When I read the hand out it made little sense. When I read the room description it made even less sense
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Ran this at a convention last night. A fun scenario, although there was not that much challenge for a party of six PC's even though
Graestos's slaves provided meat cover for others to fire at the party from the inner sanctum; but unfortunately both Neevindi and Drabbin are poor ranged combatants with their daggers and equally poor in melee. The slaves were a moral pain to the partys paladin though, and a very nice feature to have in that combat, even if they don't hit anything with their pickaxes. In the end the most dangerous foe who brought one PC down was Graestos's animal companion with his above-average AC and combat reflexes. I never knew cats were so brutal!
Cathixia was dealt with by a wayang ranger who sneaked to explore the backside of the inner sanctum, and when he noticed that there was someone inside the mountain he went and threw a chakram at her dealing 13 points of damage, then ran away screaming at the party "There's still someone here". Whole party readies actions to throw/shoot with whatever they got as soon as someone shows up. Cathixia didn't really have a chance at that point... Some interrogation followed and they breezed through the final combat in a few rounds (Yashi missed with his poisoned shuriken) due to Yashi and Leska having an atrociously low AC.
It's nice to see a scenario where it makes sense to not kill everyone on sight. Two PCs had also played The Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment before this one which offers a chance for a sort of a continuum. I had Aram Zey remember them and tell them to instruct their friends on how to get back through the tapestry, as it saves Zey a few minutes of his valuable time. Personally I like the Hao Jin tapestry, and I hope there will be scenarios in season 4 situated within it.
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I hope so, too, Zathow. So far, the lion's share of the Hao Jin storyline has made the Pathfinder Society feel, well, petulant. "We thought we could loot the demiplane ourselves and those people have access to it, too." I'm looking forward to more adventures there, free of the Aspis Consortium subplot.
Then again, when I GM, i've tries to play up the Consortium agents as players for a rival Neutral-aligned organization, rather than The Bad Guys. Sort of like Russian spies in the James Bond movies. Dangerous, capable, dedicated, but probably just as many decent people as jerks, just the same as in the Pathfinder Society.
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I ran this module for the first time today and the players enjoyed it.
The problem I had with mission is that it seems like the scenario was written to catch the players with the surprise last encounter, but the Taldorian mission gives it away.
I had a Taldorian at the table say "Keep your eyes open on the way out. We haven't seen Leska."
