Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle
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Larger groups would certainly have an advantage in the skill checks, but the mission baseline is 1 success per task which should be pretty doable for a group of 4 PCs.
In general, when this sort of mechanic is used, the extra help for the battles from higher levels of success in the preparation activities is meant to be more "nice to have" than "must have" (though in some cases it's really nice to have). Especially since:
(a) the DCs here increase as points are earned, meaning the higher levels of success in a task are significantly less likely in any case;
(b) it's statistically quite unlikely that even a group of 6 PCs achieves the maximum number of points in every one of the 6 tasks; and
(c) the PCs don't really know what the precise mechanical benefit of each task is and are not likely to be able to choose to succeed better at those tasks that will turn out to grant more effective help;
so the difficulty calibration of the battles logically would not assume that most parties will have attained the higher levels of success in any particular task.
Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Bellevue
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Prepping this for the coming week.
Is there a reason we actually need the town map? The actual combats take place in the surrounding area. I am thinking to not bother with drawing it. Am I missing something?
Just ran it online last night. Online it's easy to cut/paste and present. In person, if you can't have a handout print, the town map can be described instead. People won't be missing it.
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I played it yesterday (6 players). A really nice scenario in terms of storytelling and fighting. I particularly liked the dynamics in the finale. Now prepare it for my round (4 players). I think it's a bit of a shame that 4 players have significantly less chance of completing the defenses. Yes, success is also possible with 4 players without any problems (complete all defenses at level 1), but it would be nice if 4 players had equal chances, like in rounds with 6 players. You could have added 1 or 2 bonus rolls, depending on the difference to 6 players. But it doesn't matter, as others have already said, everything is just "nice to have" anyway and 4 players also have "simpler" encounters in terms of scaling. All in all a nice scenario.
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@Cirithiel
I always find additional handouts such as city maps very nice. But not really relevant for this scenario. Since I'm only running online, it's relatively easy to drag players onto the city map when preparing the city. At least that way players have something to look forward to visually, so thanks for the map! But it's not really relevant now. In a life round I wouldn't sign the card if I couldn't print it out ;-)
Venture-Agent, New Hampshire—Nashua
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I'm currently wrapping up running this PbD, at the end of the final encounter. The PCs have defeated all of the undead (including wights spawned by the commanders), but are in rough shape. Do they need to get off the battle map to end the encounter and stop taking 8d6 fire each round?
The scenario says, "Once the PCs defeat the wights, they can move away from the area to escape the wildfire. When they’re out in the open..." It's not clear whether that means, "The PCs are able to leave the area," or "The PCs automatically and instantly leave the area."
I took this to mean that once the PCs defeat the wights, the encounter is over and it is assumed that they will get the heck out of there, as by this point in the battle the heat damage each round and the smoke is kind of insane to just stand around in (Assuming of course, none of their own are dying on the battlefield and need to be dragged away).
It probably helped that my group were all pretty fast and could easily get off the map within a round or two if they just ran for it.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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Running this in PbP at the moment, and while not there yet, checking Encounter D's conditions I noticed this:
Round 4: The smoke grows thicker, causing anyone who breathes it to become sickened 1, creatures can hold their breath to avoid being sickened. Geir intercedes for his commanders and uses one of his magical developments in Ghasterhall to grant the undead fire resist 5 to help reduce the effects of the forest fire. The undead must still contend with the smoke’s sickening effects.
I did not think wights needed to breathe at all generally (nor most undead). Is this incorrect, an exception for the scenario to help balance out the complex encounter, or something that might have been missed by the developers?
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Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle
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Running this in PbP at the moment, and while not there yet, checking Encounter D's conditions I noticed this:
Round 4: The smoke grows thicker, causing anyone who breathes it to become sickened 1, creatures can hold their breath to avoid being sickened. Geir intercedes for his commanders and uses one of his magical developments in Ghasterhall to grant the undead fire resist 5 to help reduce the effects of the forest fire. The undead must still contend with the smoke’s sickening effects.I did not think wights needed to breathe at all generally (nor most undead). Is this incorrect, an exception for the scenario to help balance out the complex encounter, or something that might have been missed by the developers?
I think the intent is for the undead to be sickened by the smoke in this particular scenario, whereas normally most GMs (understandably) would tend to assume they are not.
Even if undead do not need to breathe (which is normally the assumption unless otherwise stated), they are not generally immune to sickened, so you could flavor it as some mystical undead-debilitating quality of the smoke, if you like.
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Venture-Agent, Online—VTT
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So, about undead breathing, for general context:
1. There isn't an entry saying specifically "part of the undead trait is that they do not breathe". There isn't such a line in the construct trait either.
2. There also isn't a line in a rulebook saying "undead breathe". The whole question isn't something that got a bunch if rulebook text spent on it at all.
3. The lore sections of book of the dead do refer to undead not breathing in several places, and we have no reason to assume an intent of making undead breathe.
4. We have a campaign ruling about undead PCs, since this became a major point of argument, that skeletons and other undead do not breathe unless stated otherwise, in the PFS FAQ.
In this scenario, though, it is explicit that the wights suffer from the sickening effect, so nothing derived from more general cases will override that.
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"During combat, the zombies mindlessly shamble toward the nearest target, retaliating against any aggressors. The clacking skull swarm makes use of more involved tactics." ... but the swarm is Mindless just like the zombies are.
Maybe we say that the swarm has been given more complicated programming for fighting alongside zombies, but it isn't actually thinking and adjusting tactics on the fly.
I've run this twice and didn't actually notice this issue, I think assuming it's programming is a bit more complicated makes the most sense.