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Yay , the site is working again! Now trying to post the stuff I have been storing in my word files.
I have GMed two PFS scenarios, “Raiders of Shrieking Peak” and “Arclord’s envy” , with the same group of characters. The group went as follows:
- Dwarf fighter, a dwarven axe wielder who started with shield, but switched midway to 2-handed grip and never regretted that. Had the dwarven Ancient’s Blood feat and minimum Charisma, so next to no Resonance points.
- Dwarf cleric of Pharasma, with Healing domain. Enjoyed channeling, had fun with the blindness spell and was immensely frustrated with searing light one that seemed to never hit (unlike partial successes with saving throw spells, a miss on a to-hit spell is a waste of spell).
- Dwarf rogue, specced for trapfinding (useless in these scenarios) and Nimble Dodge (used a lot, good stuff), Multilingual with Jotun and Draconic language.
- Seoni the premade.
All the three dwarves took the Fleet feat to have speed of 25 (really necessary thing). Two party members picked Battle medic, to never actually use it in the game.
In both adventures, no character ever hit zero Resonance (the dwarven fighter included), cleric providing most of the healing. Partially has to do with old-time player habits of minimizing consumable use whenever possible, relying on spells and powers, as well as nonmagical solutions to the problems. Repeating, zero Resonance trouble in two scenarios. Also, no “10-minute adventure days”: the group rested in the first part of the first adventure because it was late night and they did not want to get exhausted, and never rested in the 2nd one, since it is a one-day scenario. I have little idea on whether people crying about these two subsystems “needing fixes” actually did playtest the system, but at least it looks like they were doing and experiencing something very different from my players.
Overall, all the characters felt like contributing well, some doing better in combat (namely, fighter the Main Battle Dps), others out of combat.
Everything else is highly spoilerish, see below in comments.
Raiders of Shrieking peak.
Plot-device narrative. We immediatedly hated the approach “the NPCs do not use dying rules and patiently lie for days if the plot needs that”, and “Inisa does stuff that does not correlate well with game mechanics because it is plot story”. Basically, this narrative approach is why we generally avoid playing ready-made scenarios. All that stuff just breaks immersion and feels very forced.
Investigation went super-fast, players just found the safehouse on their first try and never getting interested in anything else (Seoni rolled best, that was one more moment when skill and character choices mattered nothing while good d20 rolls were everything) . Considering that there is little motivation in losing time to gather info, this scenario could probably work better without all these detailed checks at all. All it really needs is “if the group fails to find the safe house, make them do recall knowledge and gather information until they succeed”. There is no meaningful effect of failure here… would be fun if there were any btw.
Minotaur ambush went pretty smooth. Minotaurs are a bit of initial-assault monsters: if the do not hit on their powerful charge first round (they missed), they do very little. Even one critical hit did not change much. The group did not try to take prisoners, grabbed the wooden symbol, failed all recall knowledge checks, ignored the wagon and just proceeded with tracking.
They rolled great on Survival, found Inisa’s tracks and found her hiding place. Listened to her story, mumbled about ‘more plot scenes not rooted in game physics”, got some very useful information on Baphomet and went on to talk to minotaurs.
Meeting Mildora. The scenario provided lots of info on Diplomacy and Intimidation in this encounter, with a “test of strength” I handwaved as stuff that my group is going to view as too dumb anyway. Of course, players tried a totally different approach : the rogue pretended to be a cleric of Baphomet sent to minotaurs guided by a dream, to help their tribe. Nive deception attempt, well-aided by other group members. I picked a DC I considered reasonable, and the players succeeded. The minotaurs showed them the path to the harpy lair. I generally find detailed description of how skills are to be used in a particular scenario pretty much useless, since players always do some thing not presumed in the description, and I need to find a game mechanics for that on the run. This was just one more of such cases.
I found no guidelines as to how far the harpy lair is from the Mildora’s camp, had to improvise. The group approached the place, bumped into the ghasts, suffered some negligible damage and got their cleric diseased with ghoul fever, which does not really play out in a one-shot adventure anyway.
Harpy fight. Very good, tactical, dramatic fight. Nearly a TPK. Only a streak of bad rolls for baddies at the end saved the group. The harpy fascinated Seoni and kept her out of the fight until the end of combat (which can’t be helped by any player actions, which is bad). The archers did a lot of damage and survived very long. The harpy could not use drop-hit-flyback tactics because was busy concentrating on his song, so was mostly hanging in the air near one of the platforms fighting dwarves climbing up. The group had very modest ranged capabilities, had to engage enemies in melee for any good effect. I repeatedly had to remind the fighter he can’t climb ladders with shield and weapon in hands: such details are nice action eaters! Rogue tanked a lot, until went to 0 hp after surviving surprisingly long (30-feet ranged healing really helps in such fights), then the fighter and cleric lasted long enough to let the guy recover and help finish one of the archers and the harpy. Staff drops to the ground, second archer comes to senses, Seoni comes to senses, happy end.
The group was not happy about still having no clues about how the harpy could get such powerful charms. When I told them out-of-game that was interference with the staff, they just hated this approach. “A new powerful way to interact with an item” that only works for one adventure and then never works again? No.
Overall a fun scenario, yet detailed skill descriptions feel like waste of space (players do not follow the rails and do different things, and I definitely do not want to discourage them from doing these things, especially when their plan looks better than the railroaded one). The final boss's speical ability shouldprobably be easier to escape (but more difficult to be bolstered against!).
Arclord’s revenge
Plot narrative. The players were dubious about some assumptions: that PFS just got a legal right to do official investigation in such an important case, that Arclord’s workshop was in such a strange place of the city (instead of his residence, with the adventure later telling of the well-defended houses owned by other Arclords), etc. I had no better explanations for that than “it is part of the plot, all that stuff just can’t happen without that”. The “unbelievable” behavior of the NPCs just made players uninterested in the social+investigation part, very demoralizing. They wanted to skip through it when they felt it was not really rooted into anything.
Workshop and golem. The players just laughed at the guard offering them an adamantine-blanched weapon. A 1d8 long word instead of a 2d12 dwarven war axe? No thanks you, we are fine with its damage resistance… The fighter and rogue kept doing fine damage until the cleric succeeded at the recall knowledge about the golem’s magic immunities and vulnerabilities. After that Seoni slowed the thing with a frost ray and finished it with a meager produce flame cantrip. The fight overall looked nice, and even the golem critting the dwarf fighter did not do anything unresolvable.
The group failed to make guesses from the golem’s wounds, but they found the parcel and immediately proceeded to meet Ladhlia.
Lahdlia’s shop. Again, too many assumptions on how the PCs should roll skill checks, with actual living humans behaving differently in practice. I had to remind players of the “Make Impression” Diplomacy option, because they seem to have forgotten that and just tried to ask Lahdlia detailed question she did not really consider answering without being courted first. Again, the mechanics feel very forced. I believe less detailed social encounter descriptions could actually work better for our group. As a GM, I need only general guidelines “what this NPC values, wants or hates”, and then I can adjust DCs and reactions on the fly. I am not a computer game, I do not need algorithmic programming.
Eventually, the players learned most of the information Lajdlia could offer and stalled, unsure what to do next. They planned on walking around the city and collecting information about both arclords, so I had to remind them about the body in the golem’s foot.
Sole-searching. When I solo-modeled that encounter, I found it pretty difficult, with very high chance of the golem going aggressive against the players. During the real game session, the players found another solution I liked: Seani used her telekinetic maneuver spell to emulate Athletics checks and get the corpse out. She succeeded in 3 checks in a row, so the group got what they wanted. They found the letter, failed to get any clues from it (they rolled really bad). Found the ring, did not get interested enough even to quick-identify it. Overall, I really liked this golem encounter, it sure is a template-breaker.
Unsubtle warning. A fun, while not particularly dangerous encounter. The elementals surprised the group by exploding (old-time gamers are used to different fire elemental statistics), that was fun. Keeamah made some good shots that caused players worry, and then the cleric successfully cast blindness. A blind ranged character is an easy prey. The group just grappled and captured her, bringing the troublemaker to the Nexus House. Interrogation was one more thing where skill use advice was misguiding, offering too little help. Players started playing “good and evil investigator”, what was I supposed to do? Eventually decided it to be a Diplomacy check with Intimidation used to Aid Another. They succeeded and identified the culprit.
Soiree The plan of arresting the arclord at a soiree without presence of officials just made players laugh like crazy. Explaining that “duels happen a lot anyway” just made it even less believable for them.
Anyway, they accepted “it is a railroaded playtest”, went to the soiree, made their Diplomacy check to gather information and rushed into the garden right away. Attack of animated statues just added to the overall “unbelievable” and “crazy-loony” feel. The statues deprived the group of some resources, and then the grouped attempted to sneak into the garden, trying to surprise the arclord. Stealth rules are pretty cruel currently, so no surprise for the defenders.
Arclord fight. I picked Prakhavu as the culprit. The fight turned to be really easy, nothing extreme in it. Seali destroyed the apprentice with one good lightning bolt (critical failure on a save), and then the boss found himself struggling with the action economy. Web is useless, stinking cloud is useless, could have tried confusion instead... Summon monster is really bad, because first you waster 3 actions, then you need to spend an action every round to make the creature do something.. . and the creature is weaker than any of the PCs, keeping busy one of them at best. The guy really needed actions for other spells and for movement, to run away from the angry meleeing dwarves. Missed with the acid arrow, otherwise it could work.
The fight’s description suggests it was supposed to be a setup-fight, with aoe’s exploding around and provoking elementals that rush upon adventurers. Problem is, adventurers were not hurling fireballs. They just ran to the arclord and grappled him as soon as they could, reasonably assuming he had awful Athletics bonus. Adventure over, the culprit goes to custody.
Overall, it seems that the old problem of caster villains needing a well-defended position to do anything is still here. If a fighter can reach the Big Caster in melee, the difficulty drops to easy from extreme. It felt very different from melee endbosses from other test advantures (like parts 2 and 3 of DD): melee villains are really a pain, while casters can do little against the PCs.