Dawn of the Scarlet Sun Comments

[Kaelas Askavi]

Everyone loved it on first table. Unfortunately they made a series of mistakes that caused them to nearly fully fail it, although not a TPK. 5 hr 27 minutes on the first run. Seeing if we get some for a second run. Unfortunately some bad rolls from a PFS Synth stopped the party from doing much.

Most of the feedback from the two PFS players and two pathfinder players were they loved the lv 5 pre-gens with options. And wished the pregens had options for what they had in scenarios more often.

[Altus Lucrim]

A Tale of 3 Tables:

Table 1::

This table was ripe with players who had skills all around, they skipped the ambush went right to the Shrine and the GM nearly TPK'd them, but being a merciful, and Teleported away rather than finish the job.

Table 2::

This table was filled with Pathfinders who took the arcane route to dealing damage, some with Flaming Bombs, some with Fireballs, yet all eventually perished in a TPK, when the GM was less than merciful (The GM had the Babau disappear after being around for 3 rounds, and felt like that was plenty of mercy, but the party could not damage the BBEG)

Table 3::

At this table the players had a holy party, including 2 Paladins, an Inquisitor, a Cleric and 2 pre-gen rangers. This party killed both the Scarlet Son, and the Evil cleric in the Ambush, tracked the key to the shrine, cake-walked through the wights, and killed the Babau and Avelexi without falling for her deception, and without anyone even being worried about being knocked out, let alone killed

[Majuba]

At our gamestore got in 1 PFS regular, 1 Pathfinder player, and 3 brand new players (3.5 or earlier). All pregens except the PFS player.

Spoiler:

Without the Paladin pregen, the DR's were savage to overcome, but they pushed through. The final battle was a war of attrition, healing Valeros with an aligned weapon repeatedly. BBEG escaped with 2 hp. No babau, probably could have killed several.

Everyone seemed to have a great time (except perhaps the young man who kept missing with Harsk).

Group size note:

Spoiler:

The 6-player design of the module initially made it very difficult to gather enough players, since even four 5th level characters would probably have been destroyed by the scenario. In the end the five players (four pregens) had a very rough time. I don't look forward to that in the 6-player scenarios next season.

[TetsujinOni]

Majuba wrote:

Group size note: ** spoiler omitted **

There have been statements that there will be scaling instructions in the adventures to adjust to a 4 player table.

[Paladin of Baha-who?]

Casting [u]raise thread.[/u]

So I'm running this module as two play-by-post games, and in both of them, the party made the necessary checks to discover the details of the shrine, and went there first instead of doing the bait. If they wanted the inside to be completely inaccessible without getting the key first, they should have made it a DC 40 lock instead of DC 30. Getting +10 to Disable Device isn't difficult for a 5th level character, and in fact the pregen Merisiel has +13, so if they find the shrine they can get inside by taking 20. I don't see any indication that there's a bar on the inside of the door or anything like that.

What I'm trying to figure out is whether I should let them in and then have the big mean thing outside attack from behind while the other creatures attack from the front. I mean, that makes the most sense.

[Castilliano]

Paladin of Baha-who? wrote:

Casting [u]raise thread.[/u]

So I'm running this module as two play-by-post games, and in both of them, the party made the necessary checks to discover the details of the shrine, and went there first instead of doing the bait. If they wanted the inside to be completely inaccessible without getting the key first, they should have made it a DC 40 lock instead of DC 30. Getting +10 to Disable Device isn't difficult for a 5th level character, and in fact the pregen Merisiel has +13, so if they find the shrine they can get inside by taking 20. I don't see any indication that there's a bar on the inside of the door or anything like that.

What I'm trying to figure out is whether I should let them in and then have the big mean thing outside attack from behind while the other creatures attack from the front. I mean, that makes the most sense.

This warning might be too late, but do not combine the encounters!

I played this w/ decent players and ran this w/ excellent players, and in both cases the final boss stomped us (though we escaped for the most part). Of course, the paradigm shifts if the PCs discern what they're in for and put up proper spell protections.