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I think that this may well be the last Season 7 adventure I ever run. Too much new stuff for those of us who do not own Occult Adventures. If it wasn't too late I'd cancel running this.
Especially since the authors do not seem to actually READ the bloody new rules that they are making me use.
In the Yeti encounter its tactics call for it to use its extraordinary ability Frightful Gaze. But possessed beings cannot use their host bodies extraordinary abilities.
Sigh. Tactics automatically invalidated.
Edit: Oh, and the possessed Yeti doesn't get snow vision.
I guess I'll just do what the author does and totally ignore the rules. Clearly, it having snow vision is kinda central to how the fight is supposed to run.
Paizo : You REALLY give the impression sometimes that you both don't know your own rules and kind of hate many of them (eg, you realize that the altitude rules suck so you often, as in this scenario, ignore them)
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Except that your wrong on both counts.
The scenario specifies that Ryuu tries to get the PCs in Glacial Rose's gaze, but he can't use it as a standard action like you can with most gazes. It admits that Ryuu can't activate it, but it's still there - possession doesn't shut it off.
Also, possession specifies that the possessor can use the target's senses. Snow vision is in Glacial Rose's "Senses" section of the stat block.
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Except that your wrong on both counts.
The scenario specifies that Ryuu tries to get the PCs in Glacial Rose's gaze, but he can't use it as a standard action like you can with most gazes. It admits that Ryuu can't activate it, but it's still there - possession doesn't shut it off.
Also, possession specifies that the possessor can use the target's senses. Snow vision is in Glacial Rose's "Senses" section of the stat block.
You may be right about the gaze attack. I'm fairly sure if I started a rules thread on what constitutes activating a supernatural ability there would NOT be unanimous agreement.
As to senses, the possession spell itself says absolutely NOTHING about what senses the possessor gains. Snow Vision is NOT listed in the senses for tier 6-7 (the tier I prepared). Not at all sure that being listed in senses means you should automatically get it but that kinda makes the point mootish. Maybe my error was caused by a typo, maybe not.
And I have no clue where Snow Vision comes from. Yetis don't have it. I am guessing that it was added "just because". Which really is just another form of ignoring rules.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Giving enemies in a scenario special abilities that most creatures of that race don't have isn't breaking the rules, it's enhancing the narrative.
Blithely ignoring the rules is bad.
Writing down the special reason why this monster has an unusual ability, that is enhancing the narrative. Especially if there's a way for the players to find out the reason. (If nobody actually tells the narrative, what's the point?)
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Giving enemies in a scenario special abilities that most creatures of that race don't have isn't breaking the rules, it's enhancing the narrative.
In this particular case I vehemently disagree that it is enhancing the narrative.
That opening fight is going to be brutal on characters that did not play part 1. This thread and reviews point out how deadly it is. I think that is very bad scenario design.
The bad guy was arbitrarily given an arguably illegal ability by fiat for no reason except to make the encounter frustrating and brutally difficult for characters who didn't play part 1.
The only reason I gave this scenario 1 star in my review is because there was no option for 0 stars.
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I'm not going to disagree that the fight is too hard for those who have not played Part 1 - I think that the concept that they were going for was interesting but ended up imbalanced. I also agree that there's a typo in the high tier's stat block and that Snow Vision should be under Senses, but given that the high tier Glacial Rose states that it has all the same special abilities as the low tier and it's listed in the low tier version, it shouldn't be that big of a jump to assume that it should've been in the high tier's senses.
That being said, let's clear two things up.
The first is that possession clearly states that it gains all the target's senses.
Possession text
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If you are successful, your life force occupies the host body. The host's soul is imprisoned with you, but can still use its own senses (though it can't assert any influence or use even purely mental abilities). You can communicate telepathically with the host as if you shared a common language, but only with your consent. You keep your Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, level, class, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, alignment, and mental abilities. The body retains its Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, hit points, natural abilities, and automatic abilities. A body with extra limbs doesn't allow you to make more attacks (or more advantageous two-weapon attacks) than normal. You can't activate the body's extraordinary or supernatural abilities, nor can you cast any of its spells or spell-like abilities.
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As for the legality of Glacial Rose having Snow Vision, it's legal because she has a special ability that says she does. That's how special abilities work. It happens all the time in scenarios when John or Linda want to rebalance monsters to be appropriate for different subtiers or different terrains. There's a monster in Season 5 that has it's caster level reduced by a special ability for no reason other than to not kill all the PCs. There's also a monster in Season 5 that reduces the damage done by one of it's special abilities even though the Young template doesn't actually do that. Both of those are legal because the person who wrote it/developed it said it was. That's how special abilities work.
You can argue that the first fight is too hard. You may be able to argue that the gaze won't work (although I would really like to see the argument that the passive use of a gaze counts as "activating the body's supernatural abilities" for possession). However you can't argue that this is illegal. There is nothing illegal about the encounter.
Have you done anything with the later encounters? How good do you feel the rest of the scenario is? Or are you basing your 0-star review entirely on one encounter that may not have the issue come up due to party makeup?
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The first is that possession clearly states that it gains all the target's senses.
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The host's soul is imprisoned with you, but can still use its own senses (though it can't assert any influence or use even purely mental abilities).
Yes, the Hosts soul can use its senses. That says exactly NOTHING about what the possesser gets to use.
As for the legality of Glacial Rose having Snow Vision, it's legal because she has a special ability that says she does. That's how special abilities work. It happens all the time in scenarios when John or Linda want to rebalance monsters to be appropriate for different subtiers or different terrains.
Sure. I realize that Paizo constantly ignores its own rules in scenarios and just makes things up. Sometimes it amuses me. When they do this badly it irks me. You seem to agree with me that they did it badly in this scenario.
For the record, I only prepared high tier (and spent far too long doing so). So I see a possessed creature with an extraordinary ability which it can't use but which it is CLEARLY intended to use.
If you read my review you'd know that a huge part of why I hate this scenario is because it is WAY too difficult and time consuming to prepare, especially for those of us who do not own Occult Adventures. Combine that with multiple errors in the scenario and a final boss fight where the tactics are completely invalidated by the map and you get a 1 star review.
I actually liked the story and enjoyed playing it. But GMing it was a chore.
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Occult adventures is on the PRD you know. There's no reason you'd have to own it. If PFS didn't use the new stuff Paizo puts out in the PFRPG line, what'd be the point?
There is a space between "Do not use it" and "ram it down our throats in just about EVERY scenario"
Occult Adventures is also significantly worse than the other books because it has SO many unique mechanics in it the learning curve is much higher.
And I, personally, have zero interest in the book (not dissing the book, that is just my personal taste). So all of that time to learn all of these unique mechanics is, from my perspective, time that I just do not want to spend.
As I said, the solution is probably for me to not run season 7 adventures again. Not sure that particular solution is ideal from Paizos point of view, however. Especially since variants of this opinion are fairly common in the local GM pool.
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Fair enough, Andreww, but for some of us it eventually reaches a point of deciding how much we wish to play scenario roulette and risk the chance of picking up a PDF that can't be run as written without significantly greater effort than usual. Captive in Crystal was fun enough but I do feel sorry for Paul who ran it for me and had to spend the time learning the mechanics behind a kineticist that got off one attack in three rounds before he was killed. This is supposed to be a hobby for us run scenarios not a grind.
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I've played five season 7 scenarios so far. Of those, only one, this one, had occult stuff in it, and only for the last boss. Seriously, do you actually want them to not use their new stuff because some GMs don't want to learn it? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? By that argument they shouldn't have started introducing magi, samurai, ninjas, gunslingers or any of the advanced class guide classes into PFS scenarios either.
If a scenario has a mechanic or an NPC in it you don't want to use, then don't run it; you're only out $4.
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Out $4 and left to scramble for a new scenario to accommodate players on game day. And it's not that they're introducing new classes that's the problem, it's way it's being done.
In previous rule books new classes that were introduced were similar enough in mechanics that it wasn't much of an effort to learn a new class to run a scenario. And looking at earlier seasons it looks like these classes were introduced with a much softer touch. Low level side encounters where it was easy enough to pick up what was supposed to happen and minor enough that it didn't matter much if GM fudged the mechanics on the off chance something missed his grasp.
Season seven it's Occult almost every other scenario. The kineticist is completely different from any other class previously published. High level mesmermists have a ton of special abilities to keep track of. I can't see much justification for putting either in high tier combat when there are a variety of other choices that could be made and these classes to be held to 1-5 scenarios.
I've played through about half of the existing scenarios Paizo has published so far and never fought a alchemist over level seven or ninja over level nine and again these classes a lot more straight forward than some of the offerings that Occult leaves us.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I've seen alchemists in PFS here and there. A fast-bombing one was actually the cause of my first PFS death. (Still a bit sore about that.)
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In general I think it's fine that Paizo uses scenarios to showcase new stuff. Makes sense, but there are good and bad ways to do it. I think The Blakros Connection does it very well for example.
This one... not so much. You get an ability that goes off in the x-th round of a combat where the nice NPC suddenly grants all the players an ability that they've maybe never read. So in the middle of the final combat, you'd start reading up on one of the more complicated Occult classes to decide which bonus you'd want to pick.
Basically, there may be some but only a little "gain" for a LOT of trouble, at a very badly timed moment.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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The scenario ran long for me, about 2 hours long due to the combats.
The party did not get decent rolls for knowledge's so they thought they were headed for haunts when the information mentioned the Black Grave tower was haunted.
Each combat worked to disable/slow the party form the bridge encounter, Mata Ryuu and Jujanil.
The bridge encounter saw 2 party members fall off the bridge, a few be affected by slow. I was able to finish the encounter with enough time for the optional combat to start on time but that went long after the first golem exploded. The party worked to grapple and then throw the golem into the river which took a few rounds longer then just regular combat.
The fight with Mata Ryuu had characters caught in Stinking Cloud running up and down stairs due swarms, Mata Ryuu being knocked off form his level to the next, into said Stinking Cloud. Then the party running back down the stairs to go after Mata Ryuu. With the all the running it was like a bad episode of the Benny Hill show.
Jujanil was a series of her using glitter dust, using Oneiric horror murderous command to cause havoc. With her movement speed it was only really harassing the group.
Also the group I ran was a 6 player table and 2 of the 6 did not participate in Part 1 and the negative effects were hell on the one who failed the altitude check.
The party was Pregen Merisel 4, Pistolero 4, Alchemist/Rogue 4, Alchemist/Barbarian 4, Psychic 3or4, and Cleric 4.