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Ran this yesterday at the 4-player high tier.
Due to playing in a store, the spookiness suffered a bit from it, but the scenario was well received by the players.
First off, there was some confusion about the Blessing of Ashava: Is it a Curse effect?
The reason this came up, was because there was a druid at the table.
Can the player still use polymorph abilities? Normally AFAIK, with a curse, this would not be possible.
If so, what happens with the boosts granted by the Blessing?
The first encounter felt a bit weak, but I assume this was intentional to have the players test out their newfound strengths.
Is there a reason the Inquisitor isn't going for 2 Judgments in the first round?
It's a level 8 ability and he's level 9, so I assumed he would activate both the attack and the damage bonus.
The chase was extremely well received:
One player said this was the best chase he ever played.
Another said only the Scions of the Sky Key chase topped this one (for flavor reasons).
Right during the first read-through, I found the DC's pretty high, but spot on due to the possibility of changing into wolf form for a +20 speed, the party has easy access to a +4 on all the skill checks.
My party did not realize this was a possibility until I told them about it afterwards.
As usual with group chase scenes, I did not allow cross-skill assists since madness lies that way.
Without speed boosts, they still achieved 5 of the 8 obstacles.
I'd also like to shout my approval for both 4- and 5-player adjustments for the chase scene.
The fight with the lurkers had more oomph than I expected: The spiritualist's phantom and the druid were blinded, with no solution to clear the condition.
I realized the Lurkers could technically cast Blindness 3 rounds in a row, but I decided against that, instead going for the sneak attack after the first round: The tactics were a bit unclear on that one.
The wolves encounter felt a bit strange on the mechanical side:
The players don't know the wolves, so how do players know the alternative skill they can use?
There appears to be nothing that prevents every player from both rolling checks and assisting someone else on the same wolf.
I ruled a player could make only 1 roll per wolf, so the player can either make a check or assist another player, and I warned the players a single success might not be sufficient.
On the flavor side, it was an excellent encounter.
The Mists section was interesting, and I had to think on how to present this.
In the end I went with:
0- At the beginning of the session, have players write down their character's worst fear
1- Have all players hear a question in their head at the same time
2- Once all players have answered or decided not to answer, roll for initiative
3- As the first player comes up, explain what's written in the Sidebar
In the end, the Spiritualist won initiative and blast the haunt away with Purge Spirit.
The boss fight was awesome.
The party knew off the bat what they were up against, so after the fight against the lurkers, they had See Invisibility up (if they weren't blind).
After rescuing Cubelle, I ruled she would know the Glade wasn't too far off (I'm missing a timeline/ distance in the scenario), so they cast their 10min/level buffs.
The party was concerned with the damage they got from the Grasp of the Haunted ability, and then by the haunt.
The spiritualist almost blast the haunt away in the first round (but came 1 damage short).
But after the second round, with Tulvatha with nowhere to hide, the fight was pretty much decided, although it lasted for another 4 rounds.
I'm also impressed by how well thought out the 4-player adjustment is for this scene.
Adjusting the action economy for a single boss with crowd control abilities/environment effects is always difficult to manage, but this one is really spot on!
All in all, the scenario was top notch, even with the few remarks above.
The flavor of the encounters was great, and the encounters were meaningful, and the players were challenged.
Also kudos for keeping a scenario with such "complexity" so easy to prep!
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I played in Alexander's game, and I like this series a lot. It manages to place an "occult" game in which you feel good for playing a Spiritualist, without becoming ridiculously complex or obscure, or not working if nobody's playing an occult class. Kudos for that.
I liked how "force your way to the center of the awfulness" was written to be not just a combat slog.
I was a bit disappointed that the investigator you meet immediately attacks however. In chapter 1 he doesn't like you but if you show your paperwork he lets you do the things you really care about even if you don't pass a skill check to get him onside. Now he's just immediately hostile with no chance to explain yourself, it feels like a break of character.
Lurkers in Light: this is one of those monsters that are very swingy in how hard they hit. Even a single one of them playing evasive and casting all its Blindness spells can wreck a party. You might be able to beat the critter in this combat, but every other combat will be super hard. Or people pass their saves and they're fine. It makes it very hard to balance the next encounter if it's so swingy how bad off the players will be. In our case we had 4 PCs with 3 companions. 1 PC saved, 1 PC failed and one companion failed. With three Lurkers, if they'd gone for a second round of Blindness and a couple more people had failed their saves then we'd have had to bail on the adventure and limp home.
For GMs, I would suggest staggering the initiative of the Lurkers so that they don't all go at once that way after they show off how dangerous their Blindness is, players have a chance to react, rather than all three of them going at the same time.
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For GMs, I would suggest staggering the initiative of the Lurkers so that they don't all go at once that way after they show off how dangerous their Blindness is, players have a chance to react, rather than all three of them going at the same time.
I absolutely agree on the principle: In the low tier, both Lurkers should have a different initiative count. In the high tier, I'd suggest at least pairing them up (2 groups of 2 for 4- players, 3 groups of 2 for 5+ players) Sadly in my case, they were split into 2 initiative groups that came immediately one after the other due to an almost similar roll without any players in between :(.
Also, mind that technically the tactics dictate casting Blindness during the first round, then engage into melee.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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For GMs, I would suggest staggering the initiative of the Lurkers so that they don't all go at once that way after they show off how dangerous their Blindness is, players have a chance to react, rather than all three of them going at the same time.
I absolutely agree on the principle: In the low tier, both Lurkers should have a different initiative count. In the high tier, I'd suggest at least pairing them up (2 groups of 2 for 4- players, 3 groups of 2 for 5+ players) Sadly in my case, they were split into 2 initiative groups that came immediately one after the other due to an almost similar roll without any players in between :(.
Also, mind that technically the tactics dictate casting Blindness during the first round, then engage into melee.
More and more I think the Pathfinder initiative system is fundamentally a slot machine that tends to clot enemies or PCs together in overwhelming groups. In a case like this, as a GM you could get away with quietly having one of the enemy groups Delay to alleviate it a bit.
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So with the haunt “Into the Mist”, does it attack each PC still in the area or only one PC? It wasn’t clear to me which way it was meant to work.
I expect it will often go down before it becomes a problem, but want to make sure I run it correctly.
The haunt should be attacking everyone, since everyone is supposed to be within the extra-dimensional mist.
Don't forget to mention the special mechanics from the sidebar to the first player that's up :).|
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Depending on how you read the entry in the text, the "effects" of the haunt trigger at initiative 10, so they should not be able to get out before running before that. But I get your point.
Still, explaining that they the party instinctively knows they can bite the haunt to death should be an incentive to fight it, rather than run away.
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I ran this twice on short prep for a convention this past weekend. I hope I did things correctly.
For the lurkers in twilight, how is their Blend With twilight ability supposed to interact with Darkvision? It just says they’re invisible in dim light. So Darkvision doesn’t mitigate that, right? I let them pinpoint the square the lurkers were in, since they also had scent. But still granted total concealment, including getting sneak attacks on all of their attacks. That could have turned lethal. I nearly killed Lini’s cat. An average damage roll would have done it. I rolled minimum.
Theodorus also proved to be tdangerous in low tier. Once again he nearly killed the cat after it ran around everyone to get to him. Only some lucky misses saved it. It matters a lot whether you
The 4-player adjustment really helped them. Only an animal companion got blinded (an ape, not the cat), and the DC adjustments got the many successes than they would have had.
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Yeah, that's what's confusing me. It just says they're invisible in dim light... it is dim light. How are the PCs supposed to get a surprise round? The PCs are unlikely to have a light source active, because they all have darkvision from turning into werewolves.
If the lurkers are invisible, and I call for initiatives, then give the players a surprise round, they would likely be very confused. If I don't call for initiative, then the characters would likely become aware of the lurkers once they are within 30 feet, due to scent. But it's hard to imagine the lurkers being surprised at that point.
The second group did eventually activate an ioun torch, but then I had the lurkers use shadow cloak to put it back to dim light as the tactics said. It was 3-4 tier, so no one had daylight.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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If I were to do it again, I think that I would have the group see Cybelle on the slab and smell the lurkers. When within 5’ of one, they would know what square a lurker was in.
That would allow them to act in the surprise round without giving away the lurkers exact location.
Venture-Agent, Colorado—Denver
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Also, in the forest clearing it reads:
"They enter from the northwest, along the banks of a small
stream. Fortunately for the PCs, following the lurkers has
not interfered with their mission to find Tulvhatha, because
the lurkers are heading toward the Glade of Silver Sparks
as well. When the PCs arrive in the clearing, they see the
moonlit trail leading toward a burrow to the southeast."
In this case, the map as pictured is upside down, right?
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For Encounter A: The Moonlit Path, are PCs supposed to begin on the opposite side of the web from Theodorus?
That was how it was run when I played it, but other GMs in the area have been putting Theodorus's flank to the web and having PCs come at him from the East.
This seems like a very important distinction, as Theodorus is a potentially dangerous ranged attacker.
My instinct is that Theodorus is smart enough to use existing terrain to his advantage in an ambush; however, I will be running this scenario on Saturday at a con and want to make sure I am not artificially increasing the difficulty of this encounter by adding an obstacle that wasn;t intended.
Thank you!
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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This scenario killed half my playets characters, 2/3rds of the way through a three day con. They not only left smiling, they asked to sign up for more games I was GMing.
That is a pretty impressive task.
For the Lurkers, I would just have they flying around the slab celebrating. While flying they are only concealed, not invis. (Also how I had them see them at the start of the chase.)
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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For Encounter A: The Moonlit Path, are PCs supposed to begin on the opposite side of the web from Theodorus?
That was how it was run when I played it, but other GMs in the area have been putting Theodorus's flank to the web and having PCs come at him from the East.
The later is correct. Cutting off his flank and making the pc's fight through his meat shield is hard enough.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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What is Theodorus's most recent teamwork feat? Since he's using a bow, it makes sense for him to use one of his 2/day solo tactics to switch the most recent feat to Friendly Fire Maneuvers so his allies don't cover his shots. It's a standard action so he can do it during his speech.
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Same happened to me, and it's not necessarily a bad thing: You don't have to 'punish' players for being prepared :).
WOW are pretty nasty creatures for their CR, so it's ok that the players get fair warning if they're not familiar with the creature.
Giving the party time to go to a library and investigate what they can find about the creature goes a bit far, since there is a time constraint to the scenario.
But they do know the creature is a WOW, so you could allow them the Kn. Dungeoneering check to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the basic creature (excluding templates, so basically the entry about the creature in the PRD/ Bestiary).
Stretching what's technically allowed by the rules, if the players are really inexperienced, you could allow them to make the check untrained, or reduce the DC a bit, since they have an eye witness that can maybe tell something about what he saw.
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I see no problem with allowing the party to visit a library and research their foe. They meet with Sheila at noon and are told to take their time preparing for the evening. Visiting the library is a tool that allows low skill parties to be able to make the check (as the library removes the trained only restriction) when they may not have the correct Knowledge skill. It certainly wouldn't give the unique abilities she has, I agree.
Honestly, for these scenarios that allow some time before getting into things, I need to remember to visit the library more often than I do.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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I also let my party prepare for the WoW. They never got to it, but it helped.
Theodorus took out the party archer in the first round. Miss, Hit, Crit, = Dead. But then our spiritualist had the phantom double-move up, and swift action deliver a ghoul touch to Theodorus, which stuck. So the rest of that fight was just mop-up.
But it meant they were down to the bard, the spiritualist, and the playing-up paladin. The struggled with the chase, but made it. Then the Lurkers wrecked them. Preparing for the WoW turned out to be good preparations against them too - see invisibilties, glitterdust, some other things. But it still wound up with the phantom dead (and blind), the spiritualist blind and deaf, the bard blind, and the paladin unconscious. But the bard got himself invisible, which the Lurkers couldn't counter. Then he made it to the paladin, invis'd him, healed him to conscious, and then they invis'd and picked up the girl and snuck away.
They called the game after that. The swan maiden got them back to town. So they got their secondary, but not their primary.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Also, Alexander Geuze mentioned not allowing cross-skill assists in the chase scene. I assume this means that if, for example, the highest resulting roll is on a Dextrity check, that only other rolls on a dexterity check can be counted as an assist ? Is this the intention of resolving the chase as written, or a personal decision by Alexander ?
Also curious how other GM's run this, or other similarly modified chase scenes. Do you typically have everyone roll at once, or by initiative order, thus allowing people to make a choice of skills based on the results already rolled ? Do you typically allow players to plan out out the skill selection everyone is choosing in advance?
It's a bit tricky with these kinda of chases, because often the two alternatives have different DCs. And some of the choices seem like you could combine approaches, while on others it doesn't make as much sense for different tactics to really help each other. As a GM, I also find it really hard to track stuff like:
"Okay so you got a 22 for jumping, and you got a 24 for crawling. But the jump DC is 23 and the crawling DC is 27, so if I add the lowest result to the highest then you fail and if I take the closes-to-the-finish result and add other 10+ results as aid then you succeed..."
Especially when you have 6 players and you have to start tracking the highest number seen on both approaches as well as successful aids on any approach. I find it more straightforward to say that everyone just needs to follow the same tactic. I'm not 100% sure that's the RAW use, but I don't have strong evidence to the contrary either, the rules could be clearer on that.
It's also important to keep up the playing tempo, it's a chase scene after all. So what we usually do (Alexander and I play together a lot) is to first outline the chase mechanics. Then, for each obstacle, quickly describe it, and outline the two options to the players. They quickly decide which method to use, and then all roll for that method. No long math session to calculate the odds, just someone saying "I'm reeeeally good at that, let's do it that way".
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Exactly: Since the DC between the two options varies, imo cross-skill assists lead to weird situations, as Lau described above.
Also, the rules for Aid Another on skill checks indicate you have to make the same skill check to assist in the check. Allowing cross-skill assists is usually a GM fiat, based on a specific situation.
As for how to deal with the rolling: It's as Lau described above. I give them max 1 minute to decide the approach (ending with a "5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Choose!), and have them all roll at once. You want to keep up the speed in a chase scene, which should in turn keep the players more towards the edge of their seats.
In my experience, it usually ends either with a decision based on "a majority of the players is good at one of the approaches", or with "one player is excessively good at one of the approach".
One thing that usually comes up that has not been covered by chase rules so far since the introduction of Group Chases in Season 6, is the question if companions, familiars, etc can make their own check to help the party. I usually let them assist their 'owner', which allows every PC with a companion to have a better result, without having to face trivialisation of the Chase DC's due to the sheer number of rolls.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Thanks for the feedback - i wasn't sure if the group chase should follow the standard rules for skill assist or not since many of the checks aren't actually skills (CMB, saving throws, ability checks, initiatives, etc.)
I ran PFS# 09-10 Signs In Senghor which had a similar chase and two out of the four players had companions which at the time I allowed to contribute to the checks. In hindsight, I like the approach of allowing the companion to assist the PC, but not directly contribute to the party skill results.
It's actually possible to aid CMB checks under some circumstances (multiple people piling onto a grapple for example). But more importantly, these kind of chases use a different kind of Aid mechanic altogether.
In the normal game, when a skill check needs to be made and you want to assist someone, you announce who's making the primary check and who else is assisting the primary roller. This occasionally leads to the assistants rolling really high and getting better results than the primary, the "I wish I'd rolled for myself!" situation.
In a chase like this, that process is reversed. Everyone rolls a check of the type asked for (can be a skill, ability, save, attack, ...), and only when you know how high everyone got, is it decided whose result to use as primary roll and who else counts as providing an assist.
You'll notice the DCs in the chase are quite high for the adventure's level range. But that's okay, because if you have 4-6 people rolling a check and using the best die result, you get a much higher average result.
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Companions are a bit of a tricky issue. Chases like this have to be balanced around many of the PCs succeeding at their Aid checks (DC 10 to Aid isn't very high after all). So there's quite a big difference between a party with 4 PCs, and a party with 4 PCs and 4 [familiars/phantoms/animal companions/eidolons/whatever]. That could be a +8 bonus, throwing away the balance completely. There's no downside to trying. On the other side, an extremely literal reading of the chase rules suggests only PCs can make checks, not their pets.
The compromise we've settled on is that there can be one contribution per player; either the PC tries, or the PC's pet, but not both. This does give people with pets an advantage because they get access to a lot more different skills. But it doesn't throw the balance of the scenario off completely.