PFS2 3-18: Dacilane Academy's Delightful Disaster

[Phredd]

In area A1, there's four plaques with riddles. All of them but Plaque 2 have a check that the PCs can make to figure out what that plaque goes to. Should Plaque 2 also have a check? If so, what check, and what DC?

[Matt Morris]

~+~Non-Canonical Answer, Just My Opinion~+~

If players are having trouble with Plaque 2, you could give let them make an appropriate check at a similar DC (Maybe DC 15 Survival, DC 13 Astronomy Lore) to get a clue. I think most pathfinders would recognize a spyglass without a check, though.

[Phredd]

Matt Morris wrote:

I think most pathfinders would recognize a spyglass without a check, though.

Pathfinders, yes. My players? Ummmm.....

[NielsenE]

One thing to watch out for: After the main hall, when the children split up, the party felt they had to split up to chaperone all the kids. This feels like a valid/responsible adult strategy, enough to overcome "Don't Split the Party."

But it almost ended terribly. 3 PCs dealing with the cooking disaster, included the two level 4s. 3 PCs (2 level 2 and 1 level 1) triggering voidworm/akizendri fight.

Now the voidworm/akizendri fight doesn't technically start until all the PCs have had a chance to demonstrate skills, so maybe I shouldn't have started that fight. It did end up ok, almost everyone at wounded 1 or 2, by the time the finished it. With one of the PCs running up from the cooking disaster, seeing people down and then running back out of the lodge completely (and kinda checking out as a player for the rest of the session, even after we got everyone back together).

[Matt Morris]

I'd recommend not starting the encounters simultaneously.

GM Stuff:

You can downplay the urgency of A7 by saying that the kiddo is making little progress. You could also not have the hazard trigger until the situation in A4 is dealt with. On one run, I had character split up in a similar way. Once they knew that all of the kids were safe, they re-engaged with the homework tasks.

Also, it's not a big building, so I definitely let them hear other things going on with an easy Perception check.

The creature orchestrating the situation is bent on chaos, not murder, so I wouldn't play it too lethal.

All this is just author opinion, of course.

[Monkhound]

I had the same response from my party yesterday (4 lvl1 characters): They immediately wanted to split up. In the end they saw Alec move towards the library on his own and decided to pursue him as a group, because they sensed what was going to happen. After the encounter with the gremlins, they decided to stick together. Weall thought the gremlins that gave lice were a very nice touch for a school trip.

I loved the titles of the romance novels in the library :D

Kudos, this one was a breeze to run!

[Silbeg]

Yeah, when I ran it a couple of weeks ago, my party split up as well.

I did do the trick the GM that ran it for me did... ran 2 rounds of each encounter, in round robin, then ran them all together.

The band of murder hobos I had killed off the bad guys fast.