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Hello, I just started PFS and was wondering if there are modules/scenarios that are more deadly? The group I played with wasn't exactly optimized for combat (Alot of Concept characters, which are fine) But in the 3.5 D&D games im used to, my DM would PUNISH us hard if someone couldn't pull their "weight"
So I tend to build powerhouses (Ill try and make some skill monkeys for more fun times)
But my question is, are there modules that will put strong characters to the test? or will a powergamed character always breeze through things??
As I said I only played the VERY easy modules so i'm Guessing "hoping" things get harder and more interesting
Oh and because of D&D goofiness we even had someone die in our easy modules to a halfing-barbarian greataxe crit!
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Intro to Season 3 part 1, Halfling Barbarian. I saw two whole groups brought to their knees off that guy. It made a few of them rethink their characters to become more optimized towards combat, rather than concept. My local DM said that encounter wiped out a whole party once.
Fear Ledford, FEAR HIM!!!
Well a tactical mistake of leaving my slow 0 initiative paladin in the back of the tightly packed alley X_X
Was a gruesome crit tho
Intro to Season 3 part 1, Halfling Barbarian. I saw two whole groups brought to their knees off that guy. It made a few of them rethink their characters to become more optimized towards combat, rather than concept. My local DM said that encounter wiped out a whole party once.
Fear Ledford, FEAR HIM!!!
I fear the Color Spray of Beginner Bane.
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As it was mentioned earlier, the higher the levels tend to be a lot harder. Here are some low levels and some higher.
Low level: Decline of Glory (1-7), Penumbral Accords (1-5), Dalsine Affair (1-7), Quest of Perfection 1 (1-5), Gods Market Gamble (1-5), Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment (1-5), Storming the Diamond Gate (3-7), Wraths Shadow (3-7), Sanos Abduction (3-7)
Higher level: To Scale a Dragon (5-9), Sniper in the Deep (5-9), Rebels Ransom (5-9), Rats of Round Mountain 1 (7-11), Golden Serpent (5-9), Portal of the Sacred Rune (7-11), Green Market (5-9), Feast of Sigils (7-11), Refuge of Time (7-11)
It does seem the newer seasons (3 & 4) expect you to "bring your A game " more often then the earlier scenarios.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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Please note that your mileage may vary with each of these scenarios. I have ran Decline of Glory, Dalsine Affair and Gods' Market Gamble, and my team breezed through each of them. I played Penumbral Accords and The Golden Serpent and breezed through it. On the other hand, I nearly faced a TPK in Voice in the Void, a scenario that is widely considered to be on the easier end of things, and I have seen several characters nearly be put out of their misery in The Pallid Plague, another scenario often seen as quite easy.
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Also depends on your party makeup and your GM. Some GMs don't think to look for rules like smoke inhalation, or double check why the listed tactics say a monster will do X. The tactics are sometimes factored into the difficulty (I've seen it make things easier and I've seen it make them harder) so it also depends on if you are having it run for you cold, or if the GM has prepped it correctly.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 16
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Lower level games tend to be a bit 'swingier" than high-level. At those levels, a high-AC "cork" character can make a huge difference to a party's chances. You'll also want ways to damage swarms, deal with darkness, and get past hardness. If you can do those things, you're likely to handle anything PFS play will throw at you.
Hello, I just started PFS and was wondering if there are modules/scenarios that are more deadly?
There are certainly particular encounters within particular scenarios that are more deadly (if the GM doesn't choose to have pity on the party and softball them).
Kristen's list is pretty good. One that I haven't seen mentioned is Darkest Vengeance: tier 1-2 is just ridiculous unless the GM is a big ol' softy.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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Since it was mentioned above, I just want to say that To Scale the Dragon was one of the easiest scenarios I've ever played.
After we finished off the advanced remorhaz, we collected the remains and were about to head out when the waves of taur appeared along the ridgeline. The GM was getting all ready to explain how the sled chase scene down the side of the mountain was going to work, when I asked if we had a couple rounds before they got to us. A couple, he said.
Enough time for me to drop a feather token, create a tree on the top of that mountain, and transport via plants the entire party back to Absalom. Well, to my farmstead (5 pp), just outside of town.
It was a like a 45 minute game. I felt bad afterwards, but we all had a good laugh...
Any scenario becomes easier with the right 'answer,' and what that answer is changes from game to game. And any GM can make traditionally difficult scenarios easy and easy scenarios difficult.
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The single biggest factor that determines whether or not a scenario is deadly is your GM.
If you want to play "deadly" scenarios, find a GM who's capable of giving you that experience.
I have to agree. I had a choice to kill someone or the party in 4 out of 5 slots this weekend. I didnt and there was much celebrating when the monsters went down in virtually every table.
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Since it was mentioned above, I just want to say that To Scale the Dragon was one of the easiest scenarios I've ever played.
** spoiler omitted **
Any scenario becomes easier with the right 'answer,' and what that answer is changes from game to game. And any GM can make traditionally difficult scenarios easy and easy scenarios difficult.
HAHAHAHAHAHA...that's hilarious.
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The single biggest factor that determines whether or not a scenario is deadly is your GM.
If you want to play "deadly" scenarios, find a GM who's capable of giving you that experience.
After thinking a little more I realized that a lot of dms I know can kill characters regularly with any respectable mod. However almost all of them opt for challenging the players without wiping them. Thus deaths are not all that common but near death experiences are. For example I think I saved at least 1 character per mod on average on my last10 or so tables.
I have asked tables with good players if they would prefer me to be ruthless and ive never heard a player say yes. If they ever do say yes in all likelihood some will die.
If you want a deadly experience you should ask for it. Most dms aim to challenge and not kill.
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The only mod I've been ruthless in was Bonekeep. It's the 2nd scenario that warns players before they're settled in that I have a high likelyhood to kill your character. I didn't change tactics, and played my creatures as dumb/intelligent as they actually were. Each fight you could tell was designed to target a different characters weakness. Thus each fight things could go sour quickly.
Low int creatures incapable of adapting to a changing battlefield, and low wisdom creatures make really dumb choices like getting up in front of the AoO Trip monkey fighter.
High int creatures easily adapted to the battlefield and if they had a good wisdom as well they made tactically sound decisions. (Delta force knows which fight I'm talking about)
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Personally the deadliest scenario I've played (6x) was Bonekeep pt. 1.
I killed (1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 0). 6 kills last weekend alone.
So looks like I'm a bit out of the loop. What is this bonekeep you speak of? Nothing shows in the products page, and all I find is some references to Winter Fantasy. Please share!
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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Well if your players are rolling through season 0 games, see if they want to play up a few games, or play later season games.
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That said, players are usually caught off guard when:
- The bad guys focus fire on a single, non front-line PC. I reserve doing this for situations where the players are really trouncing the bad guys. In a high subtier running of Decline of Glory, I had the [redacted] on the way to the cave flank the deaf halfling oracle. They beat him into a pulp while the rest of the team dealt with the harassment provided by the [also redacted]
- The bad guys use non-traditional tactics. I had the bad guys disarm the PC barbarian in the first fight of Perils of the Pirate Pact, then another bro kicked the sword of the ship into the ocean.
Some early games are very easy when up against certain characters, but you can still endeavour to make them challenging. Heck, even if you fail at doing that you can still never let on that they were easy. Like rolling your dice and making loud, worried sighs as you read them.
"Uh oh, please tell me this missed -- a 13 to hit? Good, I didn't want you to die in the surprise round..."
Players don't need to know what happens behind the scenes. Use that.
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As of this moment the most I know I can share (NDA issues) is that it's a projected multipart dungeon crawl written by Jason Buhlman that has a level of difficulty comparative to the Gencon '12 special pt 2.
I took it as a personal challenge when I went into it knowing that I'd have the hardest job a GM has, consoling players over their dead characters. I was to run it 7 times, I ended up running it 6 times, and I had only one table turn sour over the deaths. It was also the same table who took my words of warning as a joke. Literally, they laughed at me when I insisted on eye contact during a 4 line warning. In my mercy I pulled every GM shenanigan to try and spare the 3 players who took it seriously and had the bad luck of being with jerks.
It was only run at Winter Fantasy (so far) and I'm not sure if and when it will be run off the top of my head in the future. For questions like that in the future, I'll let Mike announce it since I don't think anything has been made official or even solidified yet.
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It was only run at Winter Fantasy (so far) and I'm not sure if and when it will be run off the top of my head in the future. For questions like that in the future, I'll let Mike announce it since I don't think anything has been made official or even solidified yet.
I'm perfectly cool with that explanation, thanks!
Having been there for gencon pt2, I seriously look forward to it then.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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Yeah, a lot of scenarios it really just depends what tier you play at.
I agree. But the sub-tier can be important, too. In the earlier scenarios (including at least the first half of season three) you'll generally have an easier time at low sub-tier. In season four, though, there are several scenarios where I feel the low sub-tier is significantly harder than the high sub-tier, especially if you only have four players at the table.
Note: these observations are mostly based on playing low-level (1-7) scenarios; I don't have much experience playing higher-level ones.
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While I agree with most, I'm really surprised by a couple of the adventures that some of you are recommending as difficult.
The Icebound Outpost??? Really??? Maybe at the higher subtier, but it's just a joke at subtier 1-2.
I have to agree. If outpost goes normlly its a joke. However you can turn the mod into 1 encounter. That happened when I played. That makes it hard.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I've turned The Devil You Know 1: Shipyard Rats into a pretty brutal scenario both times I've run it. One encounter in particular is designed for some mean times if the party makes some nonstrategic choices. My unconscious/kill ratio for that encounter is 6/9 PC's including one TPK. Much of the rest is kind of a cakewalk, so it makes it all that much more shocking when things start going south.
I've also really enjoyed Wrath's Shadow at higher levels.
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Die rolls contribute to the deadliness as well. A super deadly brutal Kyle Baird GM couldn't kill squat if all he rolled are 1s.
I often hear how some scenarios have been deadly, whereas I've never seen them provide a challenge at all. Shipyard Rats.. I've run it three times and every time it has been a breeze apart some lucky rolls on the enemies' side.
And party composition ... you can't make a group fear for their lives if they consist mainly of diviners, summoners, and conjurers. Each of them summoning creatures. Guh. Damn pet classes.
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But then again, it is also on part of how each person interacts with each scenario. You could have a group with a purely built combat-based character steamroll through encounter to encounter, saying "Yeah, doesn't seem too hard", but then the next group have something blow them out of the water, like a giant beast paralyzing half the party with fear, knocking a few more unconscious, and the last person blowing all thier spells in the previous encounter, only to have just a crossbow left to shoot at the monster.
Difficulty varies from person to person, as well as character to character due to the millions of builds out there with ranging AC, Skill Checks, and Saves; but once an encounter has left an fearful impact on you, the next time you run it, it feels like you will have one eye on yourself, and one eye on your steps.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Fromper, the trick to "Icebound Outpost" is that it messes with player expectations. There are things in there that are unexpectedly dangerous.
A couple weeks ago, I had a death in that scenario when the party cleaned the outpost of Aspis agents, and then prepared to return to headquarters without bothering to heal up. (Why would we expend costly resources? The adventure is over.)
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I enjoy scenarios that are challenging, but not needlessly deadly. It’s a hard balance to find. Scenarios like Dalsine Affair and Citadel of Flame are needlessly deadly for low level characters in certain parts. While I would say Temple and Goblin Guild are generally challenging. Challenge and deadly should be recognized as different concepts and traits of a scenario. I feel like a lot of times they get mushed together.
I really enjoy challenging scenarios, as a GM and a player. Scenarios with unexpectedly deadly parts are not as fun.
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There are some scenarios that are much more deadly than others. Multiple save or die effects. Getting ambushed as another encounter is ongoing. Areas to pull a dozen encounters at once.
But my groups have done well to minimize these threats. Not only by keeping together but also in carefully scouting ahead, backing off, or avoiding conflicts.
Well it looks like i'll be happy with most of the adventures that come up then!
I'm glad that tactical decisions on and off the battlefield will determine how well a group does.
I'm glad that tactical decisions on and off the battlefield will determine how well a group does.
I agree with ThorGN's assessment -- some encounters reward good tactical decisions and others are just kind of cheap shots that you can't really avoid.
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But my groups have done well to minimize these threats. Not only by keeping together but also in carefully scouting ahead, backing off, or avoiding conflicts.
Scouting ahead is one of the common ways to pull encounters together in my experience.
DM: Oh there is a room and nothing in it (that you see).Player: Ok I will go into the next room.
DM: Ok you see some monsters, but the hidden creature from the last room gets a surprise round on you before you can react to the new monsters.
The last time I ran I had something roughly similar happen.
DM: Ok you see some monsters, but the hidden creature from the last room gets a surprise round on you before you can react to the new monsters.
This sounds like a 1st Ed module tactic!! I love the secret doors that monsters use to attack people who hide in the back of groups (sorry mages!)
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This sounds like a 1st Ed module tactic!! I love the secret doors that monsters use to attack people who hide in the back of groups (sorry mages!)
Secret doors...oh you mean my standard action greater teleport. That causes chaos every time.
Drop 2 of the enemy on the front line, and then when everyone's got their "Battle line" drawn up. Drop a 3rd into the middle of your casters. Drop a fog cloud so no one can see further than 5 feet. Who cares about miss chance when you've got 4 attacks that are all near auto hits, and do 10+ per whack.
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To be honest, how deadly an encounter can be is greatlky dependent on the party composition, and, even more, on the party tactics.
If everyone in the party just does their own thing, encounters will usually be harder than they might appear. If the party plans their tactics together, and is able to adapt them on the fly, encounters can turn into cake walks.
A second group, which hadn't been working together anywhere near as well, took about 10 rounds to get themselves TPKed.
Same tactics on the part of the NPCs, one group just managed to be better prepared to handle the situation, and went on to overwhelm the NPCs quickly; while the other group just didn't handle the initial situation well, and never recovered from it.
