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I suppose a more reasonable case would be the one where they slumber hex the lot of them, and then drag them below with them.
But I was thinking in response to the above poster who was playing up the "three old women" to convince the players that the sisters are witches. In which case feeding the PC's "These are monsters" cues and then smacking the PCs with multiple alignment infractions feels like a violation of the social contract. Especially if the PC's don't have a separate way to tell.
I would at least expect the PC's to be able to buy an atonement, at the very least, especially if the GM really did convince them that the sisters were hags in disguise.
Mike, I'm responding to you on this one as well. Since I've got more PFS experience under my belt since the last time I ran this, I don't think I goaded them into attacking anyone and if this was a normal, PFS group, not my home group that I was just testing this scenario out on, I would have slapped them with an alignment change and charged them for an atonement, but I just had the old ladies welcome them to the inn, invite them to stay, invite the sisters down (which they saw the yellow scarf) and that's when the slaughter began. No goading them into combat, no hinting that they were witches, nothing.
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So, I ran this a few days ago and a situation came up I wasn't sure how to handle...
The two merchants
First off: Two characters absolutely hated Passad and the dwarves. The ranger went so far as to shove the drake's corpse into Passad's face when he wanted to congratulate them. They saw them as useless NPCs and were annoyed that they wouldn't really help them, not accompany them to the inn and so on.
I made it clear to them that they had the same destination, but were not part of their rescue team, but that did not really change their opinion. (After the game 3/5 of the group told me they didn't really had a problem with them, but the two ladies of the group kinda burned all bridges with Passad so I ruled that he didn't even offer a collaboration and didn't hand out his potion - after all, when he wanted to he had a face full of dead drake). But that's just a side note.
Secondary Success Conditions
The difficult portion came when they fled the inn. See, the dwarf told them not to stir up unwanted combat - which they took as "Don't kill anybody". So they slumbered the guards in the yard, took the BBEG hostage and fled the country.
Now, the scenario says they have to prevent the Holy Ahendile from reporting to her superiors. They released her when they left the country. I ruled that she would be able to report the incident and thus the group missed the second prestige point (they failed big time in fooling the sisters).
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So the chose to ignore the instructions from the VC that said: 'Building a good working relationship with one or more influential merchants would be to everyone’s benefit'?
If Holy Ahendile was released, then logically her first priority after returning to Razmiran would be to alert her superiors, so they wouldn't succeed at the secondary condition. The condition even includes the phrase 'sooner or later', implying that time is on the side of the Razmiri.
(You don't need to go overboard on spoiler tags in the GM forum)
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I guess so, but everyone else was doing it in this thread, so I chose to follow. ;)
Yes, they pretty much read the initial letter and chose to only remember the "Find the missing persons" part of it. Personally, antagonizing as they were I really considered just dropping this part and adding a really pissed of VC at the end of the scenario.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Yeah, they really had three missions. (In order of importance)
Escort the replacement team of diplomats up the river.)
Rescue the first team of diplomats without the razmirans finding out who rescued them.
Make friends with the merchants in the second team so we can establish trade relations.
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There's just one problem.
They are never told that the second goal is important.
The closest I could find was
"Amauhak strongly advises the party to refrain from violence on Razmiri soil if it can be helped; Metella and Passad, in rare agreement,
concur."
And that part even made it worse since it motivated my party to go nonlethal in the last combat.
The latter of the VC only tells them:
"You must investigate and liberate the three dwarven envoys — if indeed that is where they are imprisoned — and then escort them to Mendev."
Every player will assume that it is important not to cause too much noise because of the imminent danger. But there is zero reason for them not to say "Look, you've lost. Give up. We don't want to hurt you, the society is not an enemy of yours.", thus revealing themselves as society.
This is one of the two core problems (not counting the meta "Your choices did not change that much") of the scenario.
1. The characters have no reason to search the island (they don't know about the gold there and have no reason to suspect it might be there - yes, a Knowledge(Nature) may reveal that drakes collect treasure, but this would be the direct opposite of the "We have to hurry!" just one encounter prior.
2. The characters have little to no reason to keep up their bluff after they found the prisoners. They were never told keeping their identities secret was important. Characters concerned for human life are punished for not following an order they were never given in the first place.
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Every player will assume that it is important not to cause too much noise because of the imminent danger. But there is zero reason for them not to say "Look, you've lost. Give up. We don't want to hurt you, the society is not an enemy of yours.", thus revealing themselves as society.
The characters have little to no reason to keep up their bluff after they found the prisoners. They were never told keeping their identities secret was important.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the motivations of the priests of Razmir here. They're zealots devoted to a tyrannical god-king, and by spiriting away prisoners detained by the authorities, the Pathfinders are directly interfering with the will of Razmir himself. The party have made themselves (and by extension, the whole Pathfinder Society) enemies of the Razmiri state, with all of the negative consequences that go with it.
Thread necromancy here:
It is noted that the toll is usually paid in silver or copper, so paying in platinum makes the dock thugs assume the group is rich and try a full search
What about gold? I assume it is the same as platinum but this isn't clear...(just anticipating that my players will pay in gold - but they are also very likely, probably 80:20 chance, to take up Passad's offer so it might not be relevant)