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I'd like to share the wonderful 3d model of King Xeros my husband made. He used congregated plastic from a craft store and hot glue which worked great for his PFS #0-20: King Xeros of Old Azlant game last week, I'm reusing it for running SFS #1-27 this week.
After playing PFS #0-20 and now prepping for this scenario, one thing I don't understand is why is the ship pictured as being made of wood on the cover of #1-27? It would have been far more beautiful if drawn made of crystal as described.
Rad!
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I am still prepping, but I find the setup for area A rather complicated, it's not super clear in which area the hazard is active, but it seems pretty clear, that at the start the party will not be able to see the enemies.
Actually is the hazard supposed to be in the blue area (which honestly looks more like asphalt), or the two relatively small watery areas (one with a statue in it)?
Edit: I would really appreciate if you could find a way to indicate this another way, it does not affect me, but it would be really troublesome for color blind GMs.
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This turned out to be one of the most complex scenarios I've ever run.
If I ran it again, I'd pre-prepare the urban sprawl map by outlining the "blue sections" along with walls, difficult terrain, etc. This map is generally bad due to nearly all of it being potentially difficult terrain. Half the combat players were asking which routes were clear, how tall the fog was, whether they had concealment or cover, etc. Most of the battle took place on top of the apartment building.
More importantly, I'd have a tracking sheet with what treasures were in what rooms to record what had been recovered.
Contributor
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I'm prepping this to run in just under a week, and I noticed a potential major issue that I'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet:
The 10 minute timer that exists should only be used to push the PCs along in their frantic exploration of the King Xeros and to prevent them from taking a rest while onboard the ship.
However, several areas of the ship (D3, D4, D5, D7, D8, and D9) all state that finding the treasures contained therein takes 10 minutes of work to acquire. Unless I'm missing something , this actively precludes the PCs from spending any time in these areas obtaining treasures.
For example, if they want the weapons/armor from D3, they need to spend 10 minutes and make an Engineering Check. PCs without Engineering would have nothing else to do but either split the party, or take a 10 minute rest, contradicting the sequence sidebar (and potentially having the ship blow up?).
Related to the above, if the PCs lose the combat in D8 and are all incapacitated by the Azlanti, what happens? Does the ship blow up (space-rocks-fall-everybody-dies)?
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Separately, I had a couple of questions regarding the scenario rewards:
Such PCs earn an additional 2 Reputation for any factions associated with any faction they possess a faction boon for.
1 - Is this reward only given if the PCs complete their secondary mission objectives, or is it independent of that?
2 - Just asking for clarity (my read suggests the answer is yes) - does this mean that a PC who is a member of 3 factions earns 2 extra Reputation with all three of them?
Thanks very much in advance for any guidance on these!
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I'm prepping this to run in just under a week, and I noticed a potential major issue that I'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet:
The 10 minute timer that exists should only be used to push the PCs along in their frantic exploration of the King Xeros and to prevent them from taking a rest while onboard the ship.However, several areas of the ship (D3, D4, D5, D7, D8, and D9) all state that finding the treasures contained therein takes 10 minutes of work to acquire. Unless I'm missing something , this actively precludes the PCs from spending any time in these areas obtaining treasures.
For example, if they want the weapons/armor from D3, they need to spend 10 minutes and make an Engineering Check. PCs without Engineering would have nothing else to do but either split the party, or take a 10 minute rest, contradicting the sequence sidebar (and potentially having the ship blow up?).
Related to the above, if the PCs lose the combat in D8 and are all incapacitated by the Azlanti, what happens? Does the ship blow up (space-rocks-fall-everybody-dies)?
When I played it, I experienced it as follows:
First, we're going down deck by deck, and we keep running into interesting things that we could study. However, we're in the middle of a naval engagement and there could be Azlanti reinforcements coming. It doesn't really make sense to pause now; ideally we want to get to the bottom of the ship and clear it of all enemies first.
Then we've beaten the boss and determined we only have so much time left. Basically, we had time to each study 1-2 areas and hope we make the skill check. You have to choose what to study.
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There's an element of genre savvy here. In scenarios you quite often run into "hey we could pause to study this" things and it's usually a good idea to do so. Often, after you get deeper into the dungeon, something will happen and the ceiling will start coming down. Anything you didn't do yet is lost.
On the other hand, the parent scenario of this one was also all about being on a timer, and being presented with all kinds of temptations to "stop and study this?" things felt like schmuckbait. Clearly we needed to go down first and deal with whatever was happening and then hope we could do some research on the way back.
In cases like this were established genre conventions get broken, I think you can consider giving a hint to players that they should hurry forward first. It's kinda like those scenarios where the party actually should split up - you sometimes need to explicitly tell the players that it's okay.
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I played this on Saturday, and I agree about the treasure hunt... it is needlessly punishing of small groups who may roll badly for seeing how much time they have to search for loot. The fact that multiple areas "need to be searched for 10 minutes" felt needlessly gamey, especially given the fact that most of the actions involved (using Perception to Search, particularly, generally takes 1 minute per 20' x 20' area).
My issue is more with the initial choice between the Construction Bay and the Greenhouse, because it determines which boon reward you get. As far as I can tell, there is zero indication that you should choose the bay over the greenhouse, but if you do, you can get a brakim race admittance boon. If you choose the Greenhouse and encounter the iztheptar instead of the brakim, you get... a personal boon that is extremely circumstantial, and absolutely useless if you already have a permanent personal boon (such as... a race boon).
Our group was split on which place to attack, and resorted to a roll-off, which I won with a natural 20. My character is a vegetarian vesk, and not terribly bright; he chose the Greenhouse because he was interested in finding interesting vegetables. I was playing in-character, and yet I got punished with a useless personal boon (I have a permanent personal boon from a previous adventure) instead of a new race to play.
I don't mind scenarios dispensing personal boons, but dispensing a universally useful boon and a potentially useless boon on the strength of what is essentially a coin flip choice really rubs me the wrong way. Both paths allow us to encounter an Azlanti race; why are there not two race admittance boons, and you get one or the other, like in The Blackmoon Survey?
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Contributor
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Thanks to two other GMs, I have been hit with the "clue bat" pointing me to the answer of my initial timer question.
A PC can set the ship’s transition to the Ethereal Plane on a timer, buying some time to explore the other rooms and snatch some treasures.
However, my question about "what happens" if the PCs lose/etc. and the scenario rewards question (and a half) remain. Thank you in advance if anyone has guidance on those!
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I played this scenario first, and our GM was pretty confused about the ship layout. When I got to GM it, I found out why. I had to stare at the map for a long time and read and re-read the room descriptions to figure out what was going on. It could really use some 'Tab A goes into Slot B' indications.
Here's how I did it:
* Start in D1, may or may not fight some robots
* D2 sticks up above the top-deck, they can see it from D1 or go up the stairs (?) to reach it (and hopefully figure out the ship is counting down to annihilation, or else they're in real trouble)
* The central stairs lead down from there to D3 (Magazine)
* The door opens to D4 (Cargo Hold) and D5 (Crew Quarters)
* The door all the way at the fore opens to a closet-like room that teleports to the base of a set of stairs on the lower deck (D6, Strange Compartment)
* Those stairs lead back up to the mid-deck (D7, Helm)
* The door at the aft side of the helm opens to D8 (Helmsman's Cabin) and the door on the port side opens to a narrow stairway leading down to D9 (Main Hold) and then down (or possibly up) another set of stairs to D10 (Stasis Hold)
(Forward = left side of the map, Aft = right side)
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Cast thread NECRO!!
OK reading up and I got a question about the trap in D6.
Low Tier
2 aurora shock casters +17 ranged (2d12+2 E each, explode [15 ft.])
There isn't a DC listed for the explode property but as the weapon is tier 10 I am going with DC15 and just assume a DEX Mod of +0.
Sound about right?