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I'm prepping this scenario to run, and I was surprised at how little energy there was at the ending. The energy shield collapsing event feels cool but I'm not sure it'll be impactful or exciting on its own. Also, the drone attacks seem pretty random, especially considering the players might not even be going to another tower. Plus, it's pretty disappointing that there's not more of an event around fixing the tower or escaping to your ship. It feels like there's a missing encounter.
I'm thinking of just combining the two last encounters and the conclusion. So the players will be doing something to repair the tower (likely checks at relevant computer terminals) while shield shards are falling around them and they're being attacked by repair drones. Or if they decide to head back to their ship, have them do something similar to help the ship escape while still being attacked by shards and drones.
Am I missing something though? I want to give the scenario an honest try, and I like the stuff in the first half, but I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing or if it really does end in a whimper.
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No, you are completely correct. The ending is weird and needs something where the players are actually DOING things to activate / stabilize the tower. To have it end with a more or less random fight and then some short bit of text (that isn't even marked as read out loud) feels off.
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I changed the encounter and, using some poor photoshop skills, added another tower and terminals to the second map. It's now an encounter where players have to activate the terminals and fix the tower while they're being attacked by repair bots and dodging shards.
I did a few playtests of it and I'm feeling good about it now, but I'm still wondering what happened with this scenario. Was there something else that was just cut in internal playtesting? It feels weird.
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
I also felt the ending fell flat. I haven't been changing the way it's written, because I want the playtest to actually test as intended.
I honestly think if you were taking the "run to the ship" option, I'd just flip the encounters. Robots first, and then the collapsing shell hazard as a pressure while you're on your way to the ship.
If they're doing the "fix the tower" option, I'd probably have the first tower deliver a data drive or something that just needs installed into an unmodified tower. Collapsing shell on the way to the tower. Then I'd do the robot encounter AT the tower, but with the robots attempting to sunder the data drive to prevent "server corruption". Have the party do the hot potato routine, like the opener in Liberation of Locus-1, or somebody needs to install the drive in the middle of combat (easy Computers check, but requiring 3 action activity).
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
For my players, the shards hazard and then the robot attack were a suitable amount of drama for the ending, and the shards hazard in particular definitely created a sense of urgency in them.
They also seemed to enjoy that there wasn't a climactic final battle, so much as just "we did a bunch of research, we figured out what the problem was, and we solved the problem."
The feedback I got was that it felt very much like a Star Trek episode.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
My GM added an encounter at the tower with three computer glitch gremlins and a security robot of some kind. After that, we had to fix the tower to stabilize the shield, using the Victory Point system. It felt much more satisfying and, hey, no reason not to do additional encounters, that's just more playtesting, baby!
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Misroi wrote: a security robot of some kind It was an elite Observer-Class security robot, for the record.
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