|
I played this scenario the other day and liked it a lot. Though we were a party of mostly martials, the one rogue and the one war priest we had were enough to make the difference in finding enough of the texts and befriending the Guardian, though it didn't seem like we had done all that well at the time. We didn't encounter the Lion Guard as we befriended the Guardian, but the rogue set off the trap trying a disable device and we had a terrible time defeating the foo lion and foo dog. It was a 1st level barbarian that finally did the job there.
One question though. In the mission briefing, we were asked to steal nothing from the library. Therefore, my lawful good character insisted that we take nothing, including the Lion Shield, though the scenario clearly permits that. If the Lion Shield is to be a treasure item, there should be some way of distinguishing it so that lawful good characters won't be so insistent on leaving it.
Hey Pink Dragon.
First off, thanks for playing the scenario.
Second, thanks for taking the time to come post about it here.
Third...
As for the foo creatures...they can be avoided by solving the riddle of the 4 plaques. To do this, the pcs have 6 hints.
1. The carving on the floor in the first hallway, dc20 perception check gets you "Our monarchs virtues are our own."
2. In the classroom, the plaque on the painting of the prince says "in order to serve Taldor, I must first learn the history of Taldor."
3. In the recital hall "persevere, persevere, persevere!"
4. In the caretakers quarters "in the end loyalty is its own reward."
5. In the administrators office "a cunning lie is never told twice."
6. The 6 lion statutes lined up in the last room, with 4 "steps" for them to be placed.
In each clue the order and statue is mentioned. I recommend you only describe the statues and not what they represent, let the pcs figure that part out.
This is how you CAN avoid the foo animal fight instead of a rogue disable device check.
Hope that explains it a bit better.
|
Thanks for the quick response, Purple dragon knight. I believe the rules say, "Intelligent items act during their owner's turn in the initiative order." , which got me thinking about readying an action.
my bad! I thought they could activate on their own initiative... simpler to have them follow the owner's initiative however!
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I love this adventure.
I do consider it a "classic" of the PFS library of adventures.
There is some valid concern about non-skillmonkeys contributing, but I think the scenario-specific search rules addresses that problem.
Since the scenario allows for a group of people to all roll, and not just roll perception, and retroactively take the highest result as the 'primary searcher' and all others are retroactively assumed to have been assisting, it's actually pretty dang easy to find stuff.
If the party splits up, putting one good skill monkey in each group, and has the dumb fighter types assisting (and bodyguarding), these rules are STILL going to more than likely allow for two groups canvassing the Library and still succeed AND still have time to do the whole thing.
But... splitting the party!?!?
That's exactly why this is one of the greats. It forces encourages the party to change their set ways. They're told ahead of time about that (in-game) 2 hour limit. Players SHOULD be ready to shake up the normal Operating Procedures. If they're not.. well they're not supposed to expect to succeed all the time either, now are they ;)
I do also LOVE the call out on what happens if the PCs kidnap Tobias to buy more time. I never thought of that when playing it, and never even realized it was there the first time running it. Genius of anticipation on the part of the scenario writer, bravo!
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
|
I played this a while ago and really liked it. Now I'm gonna run it next Sunday, and I'm really looking forward to it. I do think I'm gonna need a GM screen for this; I usually don't use one but I might need some trackers for stuff, and a place to arrange clue cards without people seeing how it's done.
Does anyone have advice on how to track time as a GM in a convenient way?
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Played this last evening with Maglok as GM.
Party of six on low tier:
Summoner 3 (serpentine eidolon) (Cheliax)
Summoner 2 (quadruped eidolon) (Grand Lodge)
Wizard 2 (Cheliax)
Ranger 2 (Cheliax)
Fighter 2 (me) (Andoran)
Bloodrager 2 (Cheliax)
I had heard about it being a skill heavy scenario, so I had played my fighter a few times to get to level 2 so I had almost every intelligence based skill trained (only lacking appraise and craft) to baffle as many players at the table I could (and it worked)
Human Fighter with the lorewarden archetype, 14 int and fast learner
2 fighter +2 for int based skills, +2 from intelligence, +1 from being a human and +1 favored class bonus
While I'm not sure how exactly the time for the rooms was calculated, after reading this it would've made more sense to have split into two teams for a couple of rooms, but the GM preferred us to stay together, so we managed in the nick of time.
Our knowledge and linguistics skillchecks were all way above 30 thanks to assists, good rolls and the extra clues we managed to find.
Glorymane was sweettalked into giving us the key to the locked doors (amazing work from the bloodrager) after he started talking because my fighter wanted to put a tentcanvas over him when the wizard complained about the eyes following him. This started a really interesting conversation, resulting in him wanting to see more of the outside and I promising him to find a way to get him out there.
We got into the fight with the animated swarm because of them moving and we were thought there might be a secret passage behind there. It was over rather fast, and the wizard's infernal healing wand patched everyone up who got hit by the swarm.
After some fast talking with the caretaker she agreed to clean up and not talk about our presence.
We found a couple of clues about the shining crusade, but nothing pointed at the information we needed for the princess (I had managed to determine who was the sender by succeeding on a knowledge (nobility) check on the (broken) seal of the letters), so with only 15 minutes left the only thing we still had left to do was check out the lever under the desk, which did open the secret passage. We noticed a lot of dust there, but luckily we had prepared with pass without trace potions (got 1 from the VC, bought 5 more) and the puzzle there was solved again rather quickly by knowledge (history, local and nobility) checks in combination with the painting clues for figuring out how to place the statues.
With a hasty search we found the other shining crusade clue, the faction mission for the four cheliaxans and the brass shield which seemed to be the vessel that Glorymane was talking about he needed to see the outside.
A discussion resulted in me taking the shield because I promised him that I would make sure he could get outside, with the rest protesting because it would leave a clue as to our presence here.
By then we were on the last few minutes of the play, in a mad dash we put the statues back, locked all the doors behind us raced back into the room we were put in, took away the deck of illusion cards and wiped the sweat of our brows, at which moment the librarian opens the door and mentions that we have to get out and wonders why we are so excited.
While this was all going on we found the three cyphers and the grand lodge player managed in between our talking and searching to decipher it.
A lot of fun was had by all. Awesome adventure :D
|
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
@Damanta: I'm surprised Simon encouraged you not to split up. It's a bit annoying with time-tracking I guess, but I had little trouble with that when I ran it. Some of the rooms will only fit 4 or 5 people to search, and I thought you had a 6-person party, so splitting up for those rooms makes sense.
My run of this last sunday
I'd been looking forward to running this for a month, and I wasn't disappointed. It's got lots of gizmos to be sure; this is the first PFS scenario that I actually needed a GM screen to hide stuff behind. I'd prepared well for it though and that helped. In particular I used the nice prep sheets from the shared prep site, and my own time tracker.
I mention it's a party of five PCs because that was important to the difficulty. A sixth bard player was sick and didn't show, and he could've made things a LOT easier. The time it takes to search rooms is reduced a bit with four players, meaning that a 6 player party is effectively 20% faster than a 5-player. Since the time limit isn't generous, that's pretty hefty. Also, a sixth player will also be rolling skills, making those easier as well. Scenarios like this that really depend strongly on the # of players need a more fine-grained player # adjustment. My players were quite efficient, avoiding most time-consuming traps, searching everything only once, and even so they barely made it on time.
So they gingerly opened it, and the books began to bulge out. Roll for initiative. I totally bombed initiative and they all did well. So one of them snatches the relevant book (I made him roll a maneuver check for that, before realizing the swarm has "-" CMD. He got a 20-something on his check). And then two others quickly shut the cabinet again. I didn't quite expect this but had them make an opposed strength check against the books. Again they rolled well (and the books only have Str 3), so they closed the bookcase before the swarm could spill out. I figured that since the swarm couldn't get out before, they'd managed to effectively contain it. I chalked it up to creative solutions, quick thinking and a bit of luck. Good for them :)
The players had no way of knowing if any important clues remained in those rooms; since they'd only had to search every other room once, they couldn't know that you always find crucial clues in the first stack of clues, that as soon as you get non-essential clues it means you've searched that room sufficiently.
Of course the players also had an inkling that there were more rooms hidden somewhere, since there was still a piece of my map covered with paper. (I'm gonna cut those loose, I think, as a separate piece of paper I place later on.) But they were too nice to metagame that knowledge, even though it might not be entirely unreasonable for their characters to suspect that if it takes one secret door to enter this hidden archive, there might be others.
So when they announced they'd just have to search the main room again, I took pity on them and explained two things; that the main library room was rather "junior" in content, so the chance of finding state secrets there was slim. And also that the scenario instructs the GM in how to place major and minor clues, allowing them to deduce they'd already found all the major clues in all the rooms they'd searched.
Then they searched again for secret doors, found it, triggered the trap, made the save, and found the statue puzzle. That took them a bit of thinking, but they got through. They searched the two hidden rooms, found everything, worked on putting everything back the way it ought to be, untied the caretaker and got out just in time.
So... players happy they made it, fun adventure. But I'm a bit annoyed that I basically - but not in those words - had to tell them "it's okay to metagame just a little bit on this, especially if you can justify why your character would come to the same conclusion". I think time constraints on a five-PC party are mostly to blame. My players were quite efficient, and with six players they could've maybe searched the main room a second time and have enough time to do the hidden rooms. But I'm not really happy that I had to be so obvious about this.
|
|
@Damanta: I'm surprised Simon encouraged you not to split up. It's a bit annoying with time-tracking I guess, but I had little trouble with that when I ran it. Some of the rooms will only fit 4 or 5 people to search, and I thought you had a 6-person party, so splitting up for those rooms makes sense.
6 + 2 eidolons, making it effectively 8.
I can understand why he wouldn't want the party to split up, in a fairly noisey avenue with a few loudmouthed players who'd overtalk others. It was chaotic enough as it was :)
|
I'm running this one as PbP Gameday #3 right now and read scenario several times through, but I cannot find the Diplomacy DC to sway Caretaker's Iliyana attitude. Core Rulebook says it's 15+CHA mod, but there is no stats block. From her background I decided, that she is a former Lion Blade and I can use Lion Blade's stats block. This makes Diplomacy DC 17 for (Tier 1-2) and DC 18 (Tier 4-5).
Is it OK?
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
We had an absolute blast playing this last night with a party consisting of two 5's, three 4's, and one 3.
The highlight for me happened when we encountered the swarm of books. We figured a secret passage was behind the cabinet and it required opening to gain access. Yup. We let loose the swarm of books and the adorable halfling bard kept calling out to us "Don't hurt them! They're just scared!" while the Slayer was getting 1000 paper cuts. Some snowballs and hammer strikes later left a pile of soggy, damaged books on the library floor. Umm...Oops. We had two players that could cast mending (including the bard who was near tears! "Don't worry books. I'll make it feel better. It'll be all okay. I'm a friend of books.") and they went to town on that for quite some time while the rest of us carried on looking for the documents needed.
Two of the players (including our local VC) were locked in on working on that cipher like it was the Enigma Machine from WW2 and eventually cracked it, presenting the results to the rest of the team proudly.
While the bard and sorcerer were mending soggy books, the rest of the crew entered the room with the statues and some keen teamwork took place figuring out our clues and placement of them in order to proceed. Bard player was nearly bouncing in her chair, because she had figured out the placement order before any of us who were there, but she was stuck mending books and couldn't help us! A round of high fives around the table were had when we had the riddle solved.
Overall it was a fantastic scenario and I'd love to play more like it in PFS.
|
|
First things first
Thanks to everyone who has GM'ed and played this adventure!
Second, as much credit, if not more, needs to go to Mr. Compton on this scenario.
Third. One of the main goals of this scenario is to force the players to make hard choices outside of combat. Do they risk getting caught for more information? Do they take x items? Which room is more important to research first?
While it is possible to solve everything and achieve everything, having that edge of difficulty where you are required to make those tough choices will make this scenario more memorable then an easy sweep of getting everything without a challenge.
Fourth.
Thank you for feedback and thoughts on this! It will only help improve things and make them better.
Fifth and finally.
Review the scenario! Reviewing it here is great, but reviewing it officially on the webstore is even more important! ;)
|
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
|
@Kyle: I ran this a while back and had a good time. It's interesting you mention making tough choices. My players were able to do everything just in time, with a group of five. This was pretty tricky though, because you're just in between the scale-up between four and six players. One of the players was rather annoyed about that and felt it wasn't fair.
I do think it's an interesting point; scenarios like this, with a mechanic based around X people doing Y (searching rooms), should maybe also include some scaling for parties of 5 people.
|
|
@Kyle: I ran this a while back and had a good time. It's interesting you mention making tough choices. My players were able to do everything just in time, with a group of five. This was pretty tricky though, because you're just in between the scale-up between four and six players. One of the players was rather annoyed about that and felt it wasn't fair.
I do think it's an interesting point; scenarios like this, with a mechanic based around X people doing Y (searching rooms), should maybe also include some scaling for parties of 5 people.
Doing everything is a possibility, but remember the time tracking...it is up to the GM to put the pressure on the players by assigning appropriate "time frames" to the players discussing plans in the facility and other conversations they have. In short...the GM determines the difficulty of the achieve everything option, as he knows his players best and how the tracking of time makes sense for his group.
As for scaling for 5 people, I think that little extra challenge is always good for the players to face...but I can see your logic in the scaling of scenarios such as this.
|
I believe we have the potential for death by intelligent item again in this scenario. Any non-neutral folk who pick it up gain a negative level, which is instakill for level 1 PCs.
Do we want it to be able to suppress the negative level as in that other scenario? or something else?
I am curious about this too. I believe however a N intelligent item should be able to be wielded by any part N allignment (CN, LN, NG & NE.
|
I know this is late past the scenario, but I'm prepping it for my PFS group, and I had some suggestions/things I would have done.
1) I realize that your initial briefing is a bit long, I really do, but I would have included two things. First off: what the princess was looking for. I know other people have said this before, but here's my reasoning:
If the PCs DON'T find the secret door (a not-unreasonable assumption for a bunch of low-level PCs) they have NO idea what they are looking for. This could cause them to fail the primary success conditions without ever knowing it.
Listen, I get that not every mission is going to end in success, I know that. But at least give the PCs a hint that they haven't finished yet. You don't have to come out and say "The lines of succession," but something like "Our benefactor is interested in an un-doctored royal genealogy" or something like that.
2)It would have been nice if it were more clear that all but 1 cipher is put in the 'random clues' deck. When I first read though the scenario, I thought the PCs only ever found 1 cipher, and if it was the wrong one, they didn't even have a shot at the codebreaker boon. Again, I realize not everyone gets everything, but to not even have a chance at all seemed a little wrong.
3)Include which three texts are the 'shining crusade texts.' I guessed at it, but the PCs don't know which ones are which, and they could EASILY mistake the silver horn as one of the main success texts they need.
4)Related to #1, it would be nice if the secret door leading to b11 was a bit more obvious. I mean, there's NOTHING preventing pathfinders from looking in the first areas, not finding the secret door, then leaving when the time is up (thinking they got all the clues there were), only to find they get no XP, prestige, or money. Maybe the lion could say something like "I need an edifice worthy of my greatness, I overheard that there might be one in the restricted section, in some sort of hidden room or something." A second clue that gives the PCs increased incentives to find a secret door in that room.
Again, I know that not every session will end in success, but as it stands there is one point of failure between the PCs succeeding, and getting nothing.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I played this a while ago and really liked it. Now I'm gonna run it next Sunday, and I'm really looking forward to it. I do think I'm gonna need a GM screen for this; I usually don't use one but I might need some trackers for stuff, and a place to arrange clue cards without people seeing how it's done.
Does anyone have advice on how to track time as a GM in a convenient way?
I created a spreadsheet timeline to keep track of overall time, when the concert events occur, brought a paper educator clock, and made tokens for the rooms ( 1/3 ) token per player on a small room ( double this if continuing ), (1/6 ) for a medium room and 1/12 for a large room,. You get these for every person, every ten minutes you are in the room. Once you have a set ( 3/3, 6/6 or 12/12 for that room, you get a skull check).
How did it work not sure yet, running it tonight.
|
|
I played this a while ago and really liked it. Now I'm gonna run it next Sunday, and I'm really looking forward to it. I do think I'm gonna need a GM screen for this; I usually don't use one but I might need some trackers for stuff, and a place to arrange clue cards without people seeing how it's done.
Does anyone have advice on how to track time as a GM in a convenient way?
I created a spreadsheet timeline to keep track of overall time, when the concert events occur, brought a paper educator clock, and made tokens for the rooms ( 1/3 ) token per player on a small room ( double this if continuing ), (1/6 ) for a medium room and 1/12 for a large room,. You get these for every person, every ten minutes you are in the room. Once you have a set ( 3/3, 6/6 or 12/12 for that room, you get a skull check).
How did it work not sure yet, running it tonight.
It ran a bit long, the people did not get all of the latter rooms, perhaps because they did not get all of the assistance they could (the assistant).
Not sure if it is because we only had 5 players, not fully skill monkeys, I kept track of the time, or these tokens.
timed research tokens. There was only one case I think they went over by 2.5 minutes essentially in one room. It was a zero prestige situation as a result, but they did get some neat boons. I look forward to trying it again with a different mix and see how it turns out.
How do the players know what they are looking for on Eutropia's behalf
Especially if they fail to identify the scroll seal
My eyes might be playing tricks on me but I cannot see it (but I am sure I have when reading before)
I ran this the other week and my players loved it (as did I the moment i read it)
One specific question I have is on the search checks. The module says highest score is taken and the rest are treated as aid other. Do those aiding need to roll the same skill or any of the allowed ones?
And what about the GM selected extras like Perception (would they still be DC10 for aid. I assume no?)
I allowed aid to be on any valid skill and with a wizard with +9 on almost all knowledges it meant the group had an easy time finding things. But the time constraint was still a big factor.
I am now considering putting this into part of a larger game/campaign if it comes up that the PCs need some information that might be particularly secret. The first opportunity I would have to throw it at a group would be Level 7. What should I do here? I assume just higher DCs and higher level Lion blades (and/or more lion blades) and scale up the foo lions.
An interesting point would be how to rule getting the PCs out of Taldan prison if they screw up (since outside of PFS there will be no prestige). The best solution would seem like making them "work it off" in the form of society missions until they earn the equivalent of 5 prestige
But having said that has anyone actually had a group fluff their lines and end up being captured by the bards. I could only see it being a possibility if they stay searching after the first group comes to confront them as the scenario mentions larger waves (and eventually getting overwhelmed). But this seems very unlikely
|
|
Use the following equivalencies.
Seasons 0–5: After the first six seasons, the nation-based
factions were replaced with ideals-based factions.
• Dark Archive faction PCs should treat Cheliax faction
missions as their own for all Season 0-5 scenarios.
• The Exchange faction PCs should treat Qadiran factions
missions as their own for all Season 0-5 scenarios.
• Liberty’s Edge should treat all Andoran faction missions
as their own for all Season 0-5 scenarios.
• Scarab Sages should treat all Osirian faction missions as
their own for all Season 0–5 scenarios.
• Sovereign Court should treat all Taldan faction missions
as their own for Season 0–5 scenarios.
• One faction that is now retired—the Sczarni—was
available for characters to ally with during Seasons 3–5;
ignore this faction’s missions.
|
|
Resurrecting because I can't seem to make the count of clues match the number of cards. There are 13 random texts/clues, but the way I read the discoveries there are 14 places that are supposed to have a random clue.
I think Enemy Analysis may be causing the problem. Reading the cards, it is always found in the same location (B11), but the discovery section for that area says only one book -- Cryptic References.
The other possibility is we are supposed to duplicate one of the Taldan Ciphers.
Going through the discoveries listed, I have:
B3 (2 random clues)
B4 (1 random clue + Esoteric Alphabetization)
B5 (6 random clues)
B8 (1 random clues + Encharthan Maps)
B9 (2 random clues + A Silver Horn & General’s Logbooks)
B10 (1 random clue + 1 random Taldan Cipher)
B11 (Cryptic References, Enemy Analysis)
B12 (Grave Consequences, Lines of Succession)
That is a total of 14 random texts. You only have 13 random texts.
How have people been handling this?