PFS2 2-16 Freedom for Wishes

[andreww]

I played this today and have nearly finished prepping it. Two issues have jumped out at me so far.

The tactics for Perizia call for her to throw her trident at the PCs twice per round. Unfortunately, in neither tier does she have a returning weapon.

It is quite possible that your group will be literally incapable of dealing with the Melody. Both of the skills that allow you to disable it require someone to be an expert and that is far from guaranteed. The hazard has no other means of dealing with it. I suppose the group could run away but that does feel rather unheroic. On the plus side it does only last for a minute so I suppose you could run away and hope it stops. You may then of course have to deal with it coming out of the building.

[andreww]

I ran this tonight at low tier. We had three fighters (all with spellcasting dedications), a Wizard and a Cleric (Druid dedication).

No-one had the required skills to deal with the Hazard. They ended up running away upstairs when they realised that. After they dealt with Corvius and Perizia I allowed them a chance to bully Corvius into helping them disable it. Given his modifier in Arcane I decided that suggested he was at least expert.

While no treasure bundles or development elements are linked to the Hazard it does make getting to the servants largely impossible without dealing with it.

[Z...D...]

Ran this yesterday for a 4 player group in high tier. Party consisted of a Fighter with Sorcerer Dedication 8, champion (paladin) 8, rogue (thief) 8 and a Wizard (necromancer) 7.

The entire scenario seemed trivial to the group. I think I only ever dropped one character below half hit points.

The Stranded Melody encounter could have been brutal, but luckily the wizard was able to use the arcana, followed up by the champions diplomacy check to ease it back to its plane. The thief, however, was not useful in this encounter due to lack of skills.

I will admit, if we did not have a full Arcane caster, who prioritized arcana, it would have been impossible to succeed. They would just have to weather the storm for 1 minute or run away and then return....not the most heroic though.

For the Parizia encounter, I went ahead and added the returning property to the trident, because lets be real, it was most likely lost in editing. Allow me to add this, it had no direct outcome on the encounter, besides maybe one hit that did minimal damage to a fighter.

EDIT: Before anyone tries to say I should run the scenario verbatim about the trident. I let my players know before the encounter that there was some discrepancy between the scenario text and stat block of the creature about the trident missing the appropriate property. If any of them would have been against it, I would have added the returning property to it.

[Darth Krzysztof]

Should Corvius Vayn's "Sleight of Hand" skill be Thievery?

[pauljathome]

Zachary Davis wrote:

The thief, however, was not useful in this encounter due to lack of skills.

Words that one rarely, if ever, sees in PF2 :-).

Almost sufficient evidence in itself that there was something wrong with the encounter design :-) :-) :-).

[Jared Thaler - Personal Opinion]

andreww wrote:

I played this today and have nearly finished prepping it. Two issues have jumped out at me so far.

The tactics for Perizia call for her to throw her trident at the PCs twice per round. Unfortunately, in neither tier does she have a returning weapon.

It is quite possible that your group will be literally incapable of dealing with the Melody. Both of the skills that allow you to disable it require someone to be an expert and that is far from guaranteed. The hazard has no other means of dealing with it. I suppose the group could run away but that does feel rather unheroic. On the plus side it does only last for a minute so I suppose you could run away and hope it stops. You may then of course have to deal with it coming out of the building.

Sometimes retreat or survival is the best option.

The only reason you would need to enter that hallway at all is to talk to the servants. You could pass *through* the melody, meet with the servants (by the end of which the melody will have run it's course.)

Then on the way back out go down the spiral staircase instead.

[LeftHandShake]

The lack of a returning rune is one thing, as Perizia can use hydraulic push at will. The bigger problem in that encounter is that the Nixies have the aquatic trait, so they can't breathe anywhere in the room. If the PCs can keep Perizia talking for thirty seconds or so before combat begins, the nixies fall unconscious.

This is the second time this has come up in PFS2.

[Cordell Kintner]

Nixies likely were meant to have the amphibious trait rather than the aquatic trait.

In 1e, they were an Aquatic creature with the amphibious monster ability. It's likely when they translated it to 2e they saw the aquatic trait but not the amphibious ability.

I came to this thread because I'm running this in about an hour, and noticed the Trident thing. I will probably go with Hydraulic Push instead.