PFS2 6-04 An Enkindled Carnival

[The.Vortex]

I DMed this yesterday for a group with 32 ACP. Fortunately enough we had a Gunslinger, a Bow Ranger and multiple casters, one of them a Bard with Force Barrage. But we also had some people who simply couldn't participate in the final fight at all. I didn't realise it before running, but that fight has some serious issues:

1. The final enemy is flying 10 feet above the water and is throwing knives or his cantrip. So there is bascially no chance to ever get into melee with it without using a reach weapon. And even with a reach weapon, you have to be either on one of the piers and very close to the Phantom, or use one of the Effervescant Ampules provided by the adventure. Unfortunately, those are Talismans, so you need 10 minutes to affix them. You get them before the Bear Dance, and after that there isn't really all that much time to take breaks, so I deem it unlikely that many groups will have had the time to even affix them.

2. The enemy is basically the same in low tier. That means 4 Level 3 characters can encounter a flying incorporeal enemy with ranged attacks, who specifically has the tactic to stay out of melee. It has a resistance of 6 against nonmagical attacks - so unless you have a true ranged character or spells, even your ranged backup weapons will have a hard time damaging it

3. The CP adjustments are pretty much useless! Since it is almost impossible to ever be able to reach the creature in melee (see 1), there isn't much point in trying to run around the map and catch it. And since the enemy has ranged, but with very limited range, it won't move out of range of the low range options the group might be using, either. All that combines into a situation, where all the additional hazards will be placed in positions where they are more than likely never triggered. The two hazards that are always present are in the two spots where it is likely that someone will get close enough to trigger them eventually, but additional ones have to be placed "spread as evenly as possible", which means they are placed somewhere, where no player character will ever be.

In combination, all those effects make for one potentially nasty, potentially boring for a lot of players, and pretty much unscaling fight.

One solution that would at least give players some option for melee, would be to have the phantom fly only 5 feet above the water. That way it would still be in range for normal melee attacks if it gets to close to a pier of the Ampules are actually used. But that would only take care of part of the issues.

[Talon Stormwarden]

Reading over the mentioned encounter, a few things occur to me. You COULD say that the hazards start activated, as there are many people in the area fleeing, etc. That way the other PCs have something to do. But at the higher CPs that would turn into a LOT of aoe damage. There can be up to 5 extra hazards, and all of them will very likely be within 90' of the phantom. So on the one hand we have CP scaling that does nothing (as The.Vortex explains) or on the other hand slays parties outright after just a couple of rounds. Neither seems intended.

[Talon Stormwarden]

I suppose, since the players aren't likely to know what the hazards will do until they trigger one, only a few will be activated, only what's needed to get at the phantom. So there will be some AoE damage being tossed around but not enough (hopefully) to overwhelm them. The rest of the party will probably want to stop the hazards and/or heal up while those who CAN damage the phantom deal with it. Still, not much point to scaling as written.

What I might do is alternate any extra hazards due to scaling between where the party is likely to run into them (i.e. between where the phantom is and the party's likely path) and further out where the party aren't likely to activate them at all. If someone runs in heedlessly they might trigger 2-3 or more hazards and really make for a difficult fight. If they move in more slowly and tactically they may be able to disable each hazard one at a time and so not get overwhelmed.

[MithraMax]

On page 22, does anyone know what the correct starting number for Big Carnival Bears is in Event 2: Bears! (Levels 3-4)? The number given is “0.”

[logsig]

MithraMax wrote:

On page 22, does anyone know what the correct starting number for Big Carnival Bears is in Event 2: Bears! (Levels 3-4)? The number given is “0.”

That is not an error. "(0)" here means that they do not appear at the base of 8 CP but they can appear at higher CP scaling. You can also see this on page 14 where base creature loadout is stated as CARNIVAL BEARS(2).

At 8 CP there are 2 carnival bears and 0 big carnival bears. At 10 CP, replace the 2 carnival bears with 2 big carnival bears, and so forth.

[MithraMax]

logsig wrote:

MithraMax wrote:

On page 22, does anyone know what the correct starting number for Big Carnival Bears is in Event 2: Bears! (Levels 3-4)? The number given is “0.”

That is not an error. "(0)" here means that they do not appear at the base of 8 CP but they can appear at higher CP scaling. You can also see this on page 14 where base creature loadout is stated as CARNIVAL BEARS(2).

At 8 CP there are 2 carnival bears and 0 big carnival bears. At 10 CP, replace the 2 carnival bears with 2 big carnival bears, and so forth.

Thanks for the answer…I’m a relatively new GM and didn’t understand…running this tonight. Once again, thank you.

[Loki_Thief]

A similar issue that does seem genuinely ambiguous is Event 4: Vengeful Dead. The adventure text says that the "base" encounter for levels 5-6 is a hulk and two wights, while the listing for that encounter in Appendix 2 says the pre-scaling encounter has just one wight alongside the hulk. Some back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests to me that two wights is correct, but it's not conclusive either way.

[Loki_Thief]

The.Vortex wrote:

1. The final enemy is flying 10 feet above the water and is throwing knives or his cantrip. So there is bascially no chance to ever get into melee with it without using a reach weapon. And even with a reach weapon, you have to be either on one of the piers and very close to the Phantom, or use one of the Effervescant Ampules provided by the adventure. Unfortunately, those are Talismans, so you need 10 minutes to affix them. You get them before the Bear Dance, and after that there isn't really all that much time to take breaks, so I deem it unlikely that many groups will have had the time to even affix them.

Regarding the Ampoules, I don't think the issue is having time to affix them, given that things don't go south until after the Bear Dance, as much as the players not seeing a reason to. I'd recommend informing the players of their effects, and having Geltra nudge any PCs who might benefit them to put them on as part of her vague premonition.

The.Vortex wrote:

2. The enemy is basically the same in low tier. That means 4 Level 3 characters can encounter a flying incorporeal enemy with ranged attacks, who specifically has the tactic to stay out of melee. It has a resistance of 6 against nonmagical attacks - so unless you have a true ranged character or spells, even your ranged backup weapons will have a hard time damaging it

If you truly end up with an Oops! All Melee! party, then yeah, they're gonna have a rough time as written. I'd handle that by adjusting the phantom's tactics to have them charge in to melee from time to time. Tactically sound? No... but very much in character for an unquiet vengeance-maddened spirit. Maybe describe its eyes glowing the same red as the rain just before it charges in for a stabbing frenzy. Combine this with the reduced "flight ceiling" if you feel more help would be warranted.

Also, if you HAVE ranged characters and just want the melee types to be able to contribute, remember that they can still make checks to Aid (the phantom was alive this morning-- that non-magical crossbow can probably still make it flinch enough to Aid your ally's attack), Demoralize (it has good Will, but it's not immune), and otherwise provide support. They've just had two street brawls with melee-focused opponents, it's okay for the ranged characters to have the spotlight in this fight. If a player really can't come up with a way to help, and is getting genuinely frustrated, throw them a bone and have the phantom succumb to its rage and go into aggro stabby mode for a bit, or cut them some slack and let them reach the phantom with a vertical Leap from below.
Anyway, just my thoughts.

[Dennis Muldoon]

I see a lot of discussion of how to handle the phantom here, but that's not what worries me reading this. I'd love to hear how it's gone for people when multiple copies of the hazard are going at once. Aside from the huge range and not-insignificant damage to *all* PCs in 90 feet, all those PCs also have a chance to be blinded (and on a failure no less, not a crit fail). If you have 4 copies of the hazard going at once, that's potentially 4 chances to fail a save and be blinded each round, which seems like it would result in a *lot* of blind PCs. This seems really rough on both players and GMs at first glance, so I'd love to hear how it's gone for folks.

[logsig]

While it could certainly be done, it requires quite a significant effort from the PCs to trigger more than 2 hazards at the same time since they are spaced out quite a bit and most people will naturally be hesitant to move very far from the rest of the party or get in the water. They aren't hard to disable either; savvy players will make it a priority to disable them as soon as possible, at least once they experience the hazard's routine.

I'll also say you can somewhat steer people either towards or away from untriggered hazards by moving the phantom around judiciously.

[Dennis Muldoon]

You say they aren't hard to disable, but there are only two skill options and one of them takes three successes to disable the thing, and no option to attack it. It's not hard for a character trained in occultism, but its hard-to-impossible for anyone else. The DC may not be high, but I think that's on balance harder to disable than most complex hazards.

[cavernshark]

Do NOT start with all the hazards triggered to make this a more "exciting" fight.

When I played this, we had 5 copies of the hazard on the board (high tier, 6 players: 1 x L4, 3 x L5, 2 x L6). The GM made an honest mistake and had them all trigger at the start of the fight (missed the line they only roll initiative after their reaction). This meant that in a single round we were being subject to 20d6 damage across five reflex saves. Burning hero points on saves and everything had most of us down to less than 1/3 health and an animal companion in a dying state in one round before most of us had gone. We players at the table were incredulous since it felt like there was no chance. On my turn I spent all of my actions trying to identify the hazards (I used Act Together to have my Eidolon and I both try to figure them out) and succeeded. Only two of our PCs had Religion or Occultism appreciably trained. Our GM allowed us to disable them from a distance and even with that I failed and so did the other player. Most everyone else either tried to close on the ghost, do some damage if they could, or heal if they couldn't do anything else. Round two was going to murder an animal companion before any of us could even go.

All this to say, if you're wondering what happens if they all trigger... it's basically death. We were all visibly frustrated at this point and I pulled the GM aside to confer. We found the issue and rolled back the damage from round 1 to keep the fight going (accepting that we'd spent round one healing/spending actions and hero points) and in the next round only had the two active which should have been on as our party had advanced to the docks. I haven't read the scenario in full yet to GM, but based on what I saw it seems like the spirit is probably meant to lead you around the lake a bit, staying out of range until people close and then moving to the next. But yes, if the party has no way to turn these off they will absolutely murder everyone quite quickly if they activate to many at once.

[logsig]

In general, GMs do have different ideas about how the party must deal with hazards.

- Some GMs require the party to "identify" the hazard in order to know what skills can be used to disable it, others do not.
- Some GMs require the disabling PC to be adjacent to the hazard to disable it, while others make a call on required proximity based on the nature of the hazard and its disable mechanism.
- Some GMs only allow the skills listed in the stat block to disable, while others will accept "creative solutions", or other plausible skills that players might have.

So even leaving aside unintended cases such as mistakenly having all the hazards starting as triggered, the difficulty of dealing with the hazards is going to be quite GM-dependent.

[Dark Deed]

Blood Vendetta
Trigger A creature deals piercing, slashing, or persistent bleed damage to you; Requirements You can bleed

So phantom can bleed apperently...

[Super Zero]

They're immune to bleed. But I decided to err on the side of "this is meant to do something," and cast the spell anyway.

[Dark Deed]

I was pointing out obvious mistake in creature statblock.

[Squark]

So, should the party be able to see the hazards before they're triggered? The text seems to suggest that, but I'm used to hazards being undetected before activation (or at least, seeming harmless). When I've played the scenario, there's often some confusion on the part of the players when the physical representations of the apparition are immune to damage, so I thought I'd ask

[logsig]

Squark wrote:

So, should the party be able to see the hazards before they're triggered? The text seems to suggest that, but I'm used to hazards being undetected before activation (or at least, seeming harmless). When I've played the scenario, there's often some confusion on the part of the players when the physical representations of the apparition are immune to damage, so I thought I'd ask

The box text does describe the apparitions in a flavorful way but that does not mean the hazards start out detected (located in an exact spot on the map).

Before a hazard activates (triggers), it can be detected in the usual way using Search during Exploration, or Seek in combat - i.e. Perception vs. the hazard's Stealth DC, assuming the party is in range to do so and has the required proficiency.

In general, players need to learn from a knowledge check (or just guess correctly) whether a thing is a hazard as opposed to a creature, and how to disable the hazard. Many hazards can only be disabled via skill checks but some do have HP and can be disabled by doing enough damage.