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Group trashed this module in one session. Here's the super quick recap:
Made it to the hall. Prof said to let him finish his study. They said okay, and set up a campfire outside the hall until he was done. No investigation happened, because the players were not nosy buggers.
The waves happened. The players all stood in the main lobby, made a few barricades. They killed things as they arrived. Nothing was really threatening, because they had three clerics and a druid, and the new death rules.
The shadow fight had one cleric go unconscious three times, as he was flanked by the shadows. Because there's no coup de grace option, and hitting a downed character doesn't increase their dying, so they ping-ponged up every time before making a death save. It was hilarious how ineffective damage is against clerics.
The final boss was a little tougher, due to his AC. His spells all fell flat, but his poison was pretty neat. He just got surrounded and beat up in the end.
The players were extremely dissappointed by the plot. They found it ridiculous that the cure for the professor's problem showed up ten minutes after they arrived. They scoffed at the fact that the few items called out for them to find were garlic and silver weapons. It made no sense how spaced out the waves were if the attackers wanted to actually succeed. They agreed that the professor's reluctance to explain the issues facing him, to members of the Order of the Palatine Eye specifically here to help him, was absurd and playing him as written had him come across as stupid, and two of the students had no real detail to play. They were baffled that characters were basically expected to snoop around a stranger's house, a respected professor. They said it felt like a video game where you loot random villager's rooms.
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It was hilarious how ineffective damage is against clerics.
As a player in Lyee's group during this session, this phrase couldn't be any more true.
You can resume this whole module by : a cleric party is invincible. Or at least it felt so. We went against enemies we had an advantage over while the module told us to do so, so we basically trashed it and didn't really discover much of the system itself.They found it ridiculous that the cure for the professor's problem showed up ten minutes after they arrived. [...] It made no sense how spaced out the waves were if the attackers wanted to actually succeed. They agreed that the professor's reluctance to explain the issues facing him, to members of the Order of the Palatine Eye specifically here to help him, was absurd and playing him as written had him come across as stupid [...] They were baffled that characters were basically expected to snoop around a stranger's house, a respected professor.
Exactly. The "cure" was thrown at our face, the fact that we were sleeping outside too (who would sleep inside such a suspicious mansion where the doctor seems kinda insane/untrustworthy, the students don't give a rat's ass about you, the doctor goes back to some "research" that no matter what he says is clearly suspicious and potentially dangerous, etc) got us the advantage of not being surprised by the raid.
The waves... WAVES. Are we playing Pathfinder ? WAVES of monsters ? Then goes the "expectation" of searching for clues inside the house. We're here to help, we're strangers, who would expect players of Pathfinder to actually rumble the belongings of an esteemed doctor our Order needs when your party is supposed to be Good-aligned ?Well, at least I laughed when zombies started to rain upon us from the balcony.
I went down 3 times against the Shadows because I was prone and under a pincer attack vs touch attacks. I basically had less AC than my very base AC. But even that was almost funny as we brushed it off.
Honestly, I wasn't taking this fight seriously, when seeing the Shadows I was like "oh s!$+, I'm dead now, didn't take it seriously enough".
In the end, beside taking a long time to down (since we had to keep me alive at the same time), they weren't that dangerous, they could've been if they had always top damage tho. But anything would be dangerous in this case.
Final boss was the real (only?) threat. Good AC, nice abilities, poison is definitely strong, long to take down, pretty strong attacks too.
But the huge amount of healing and resources at our disposal made it almost trivial.
Oh by the way, Holy Water is pointless, again.
Prof said to let him finish his study. They said okay, and set up a campfire outside the hall until he was done. No investigation happened, because the players were not nosy buggers.
This is something I've been struggling with while trying to prep this chapter. I'd really prefer the chapter to take two sessions, but really, there doesn't seem to be any good motivation for the characters to explore the place after being initially told to wait (I wouldn't be surprised if some parties even try to force the professor to come along with them). Being told that the professor isn't telling you the whole truth doesn't exactly scream "You should snoop around his house to find out what's going on!" And, I mean, it's not like you really get anything useful if you do explore. You find some clues about what's going on, but who really cares because the professor spills the beans after the first wave anyway.
Agree, narrative-wise the story is very weak.
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Thanks, this is useful information.
It seems like the adventure leaves out a mechanism for involving Lucvi Yasterna up front. Since she is suspicious of Dr. Oscilar, the adventure could have her prompt the PCs to investigate. As she leads the party to their quarters upstairs, she could make a simple remark about the Dominion of the Black to see if the PCs express interest, not too much of a stretch as they all serve the Palatine Eye. If the PCs then discern her fears and get her to talk, she could give a little speech urging them to poke around for anything that might explain why Dr. Oscilar is behaving strangely. Of course she is too busy helping the professor to do it herself, and besides she has the most to lose if she gets caught snooping, whereas the PCs can probably get away with some mild rudeness. This is a pretty stock reaction for a character in a mystery story and links up with the adventure's intended outcome of using Lucvi Yasterna to confront the professor after the PCs turn up evidence.
Thanks, this is useful information.
It seems like the adventure leaves out a mechanism for involving Lucvi Yasterna up front. Since she is suspicious of Dr. Oscilar, the adventure could have her prompt the PCs to investigate. As she leads the party to their quarters upstairs, she could make a simple remark about the Dominion of the Black to see if the PCs express interest, not too much of a stretch as they all serve the Palatine Eye. If the PCs then discern her fears and get her to talk, she could give a little speech urging them to poke around for anything that might explain why Dr. Oscilar is behaving strangely. Of course she is too busy helping the professor to do it herself, and besides she has the most to lose if she gets caught snooping, whereas the PCs can probably get away with some mild rudeness. This is a pretty stock reaction for a character in a mystery story and links up with the adventure's intended outcome of using Lucvi Yasterna to confront the professor after the PCs turn up evidence.
This is pretty much also what I've decided to do to give the PCs motivation and "license" to explore when we get to this module. It's a pretty safe way to actually get the party involved in the pre-combat adventure. It's much more satisfying if the party can force the professor to spill the beans instead of him doing it automatically.
I'm probably also going to shorten the time between the waves, except for between the first scouts and second wave, when it shouldn't necessarily be clear that there will be a second wave. It is an all-healer party after all. I'm not sure why there are /two/ adventures in the playtest set up in siege fashion but as long as there are, I do want the first one to still be fun / tense and for it to seem like the enemies are actually trying.
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Thanks for the heads up! I will definitely have Lucvi intimate some concern. I'll probably also make it so the PCs don't have to pry as much. I'll look to see how other tables handle it before I run Chapter 3. It looked like a one-and-done even with the investigation.
By the way, does anyone know how the PCs are supposed to explore the salon? The book states that they can sneak around after they've gone to bed, but by that time the waves will have started.
It seems like the adventure leaves out a mechanism for involving Lucvi Yasterna up front. Since she is suspicious of Dr. Oscilar, the adventure could have her prompt the PCs to investigate. As she leads the party to their quarters upstairs, she could make a simple remark about the Dominion of the Black to see if the PCs express interest, not too much of a stretch as they all serve the Palatine Eye. If the PCs then discern her fears and get her to talk, she could give a little speech urging them to poke around for anything that might explain why Dr. Oscilar is behaving strangely. Of course she is too busy helping the professor to do it herself, and besides she has the most to lose if she gets caught snooping, whereas the PCs can probably get away with some mild rudeness. This is a pretty stock reaction for a character in a mystery story and links up with the adventure's intended outcome of using Lucvi Yasterna to confront the professor after the PCs turn up evidence.
This is a great idea to get the PCs involved.
We got through the first two waves so far. We spent some time on character creation during the session, and then had a lot of roleplaying before the attacks started. The party has been absolutely obliterating the undead. The Cleric and Sorc both have wands of Searing Light, and one of them crit on a vampire spawn.
By the way, does anyone know how the PCs are supposed to explore the salon? The book states that they can sneak around after they've gone to bed, but by that time the waves will have started.
I assumed it was a typo. Or at least that one version of the story perhaps was meant to take multiple days and when it got changed to a single day, they forgot to leave that out. It didn't seem like the players would miss out on much by not being able to explore that room.
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The biggest problem I saw was that “solving the mystery” didn’t matter at all. If the players figured out what was going on, they had no advantage against the bad guys. And if they didn’t figure out what was going on, the professor just tells them after the first fight anyway. So what’s the point?
I’m trying really hard to run these as written so that the developers get good feedback, but the adventures really feel hastily thrown together and it’s not as fun as it could be.