| KHShadowrunner |
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I've played a decent bit of pathfinder and have found a strong interest in planar travel. Of which I learned that Season 8 is all about planar travel to the elemental planes. This sounds like a crazy amount of fun, and something I'm considering running. But before I jump in headstrong and purchase more of the pdfs, I wanted to see if anyone has had any experience adjusting PFS sessions and if they've ever turned it into more standalone moduleish type situations. Curious as to if it's an awful idea or not that bad.
I know I'll need to adjust scaling of encounters for the entire thing, and location starts might need to shift slightly, but it doesn't seem undoable to me. Has anyone done it either with a different season or with season 8? Or any other elemental planar travel one-shots or modules?
Any suggested readings or choices? I'm curious as to just how bad this is going to be. But it still sounds really interesting so. I'd be interested in any gotchas and concerns.
| Neriathale |
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The PFS adventures are a shorter than modules, and because they are designed to play the same way for all groups they tend to have quite railroad-y plots - e.g. "the party do encounters 1 and 2, then either of encounters 3 or 4 depending on whether they go left or right, then encounter 5" is about as much freedom as they include to allow players to improvise.
That said, within the fairly rigid format they do have some nice plot ideas and some of them are quite imaginative at using odd rules sets (chases, social combat, even mythic rules) that refs might otherwise not have tried out.
My memory of the Season 8 elemental adventures is that the Air and Water ones were great fun, the Earth one was terrible and the Fire ones didn't feel very fire-y, because the dangers of the elemental plane were downplayed to reflect the fact it was for low level characters. Air is a trilogy, so running the three parts together would make a decent length adventure, and it included a long travel section that you could flesh out with your own side quests.
I suspect one of the main problems is that the modules assume the PCs are members of the Pathfinder society and will go off and do things because they have been told to. If you are running it in your own campaign you would need to find a reason for the party to go along with the plot and replace some of the NPCs with your own.
| thorin001 |
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I would suggest starting with 8-8 Sandstorm Prophecy. It is for levels 1-5. It takes place on Golarion but starts you on the path to the plane of Air.
Next would be 8-10 Secrets of the Endless Sky. This is the direct sequel to the previous adventure. It is also for levels 1-5.
Next is 8-12 Caught in the Eclipse. The follows on the previous adventure and finally gets you to the plane of Air. The only problem is that it is for levels 3-7, so if your party has only played the previous two adventures they will have neither the experience nor the gear to face this.
After that I would recommend 8-5 Ungrounded but Unbroken. This takes place on the plane of Earth and is for level 1-5.
The next one should be 8-19 Treacherous Waves. This one take place on the plane of Water and is for levels 3-7. Since you already needed to be at least level 3 for 8-12 this should not be an issue.
After this the order of things is very much up to you. The only problem is that the minimum level is 5, so you will need to find some other adventures to fill in the experience. The adventures are:
8-9 The Cindersworn Pact on the plane of Fire
8-11 Cleansed With Flame on the plane of fire
8-24 Raid on Cloudborne Keep on the plane of Air
Lastly there is 8-20 Torrent's Last Will on the plane of Water, but this is for characters level 7-11.
All of these are to get items of a big quest. If you want to actually finish the quest that they were written for you would also need 8-13 What Sleeps in Stone. This is back on Golarion and is for characters level 7-11.
And the quest finale is 8-25 Unleashing the Untouchable. You go back to the elemental planes. It is for characters at least level 12.
Kurald Galain
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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If you're looking for good adventures or story paths, what you should really do is check the ratings here at Paizo. Don't take one person's word for it, take multiple people's worth for it.
Most adventures get 3.5 to 4 stars. Anything 4.5 or above should be really great, and a good place to start. Anything rated 3 is probably not worth playing; anything rated below 3 is a dumpster fire that you should avoid at all costs. I don't think anything at all is rated below 2.5, so you should read 2.5 as "abysmal".
| Neriathale |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you're looking for good adventures or story paths, what you should really do is check the ratings here at Paizo. Don't take one person's word for it, take multiple people's worth for it.
Most adventures get 3.5 to 4 stars. Anything 4.5 or above should be really great, and a good place to start. Anything rated 3 is probably not worth playing; anything rated below 3 is a dumpster fire that you should avoid at all costs. I don't think anything at all is rated below 2.5, so you should read 2.5 as "abysmal".
With the caveat that there are a few adventures that are listed as 'replayable' and those get higher star ratings because PFS players love being able to play the same adventure with all their characters.
| Tim Emrick |
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Keep in mind, too, that only a fraction of each season's scenarios are tied into that season's metaplot (in Season 8's case, building alliances on the elemental planes to facilitate a high-level quest at the end of the season). If you want to play through a single season like it's a mini-campaign, you will need to fill in some advancement gaps here and there with scenarios that have no connection to the metaplot beyond the basic premise of these are all missions given to Pathfinders. However, in some seasons, you might be able to suss out an interesting side plot or NPC that connects a few of those other scenarios, to help them feel less like random filler.
The closest I've experienced to what you asked about is when, a couple years back, some of our local PFS GMs arranged to run all of the Season 4 scenarios involving ancient Thassilonian secrets over the course of several months. The higher-level ones, which fed into the season's climactic showdown, made a very nice arc that felt more like a cohesive campaign than the usual grab-bag of missions.