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So I'm running this in a couple of weeks and asked my local VA if I could get started prepping it. I haven't gotten very far yet but I did notice that on the page with all the treasure bundle information and how to calculate tiers and all that information, the treasure bundle information was set for a 1-4 instead of a 5-8. I mean, it isn't that difficult to look up the information but I'd hate to have a GM who is covering for someone else last minute not have that information.
Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle
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The DCs for the Escape through the City skill challenges are crazy high. Should they really be that high?
This question has been asked elsewhere and not answered. Seeing that the Foundry patch notes forum has nothing about it and the team that creates the Foundry scenarios typically has the most information on this sort of thing, I wouldn't expect to get any clarification.
Consider however that the mechanical impact of getting Awareness Points for those skill challenges is, in the grand scheme of things, pretty minimal.
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Encounter A: Is it really supposed to be Retributive Strike for all the mooks, and not Reactive Strike? I could see it go both ways.
Escape through the city: I'm not that worried about the DC's, but I am going to mention how hard the DC's are, as I do with most DC's in minigames (no numbers of course: Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard), otherwise this is'nt going to work: With the way the obstacles are described, it's kind of obvious that some options are the "if nothing else" choices (blocking a stampeding crowd rightfully is ridiculously hard). I'm a bit torn, because there are a few obstacles that ask for "less common" skills, but still require multiple successes from the party. Otherwise this section seems fine.
About the trigger warning: How to go about if someone does have an issue with it? It's quite a central element to the plot. Have a mook stab him ritually instead?
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Central Europe
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Starting preparing the scenario:
From Travel Phase 1:
To overcome each obstacle without detection, at
least half of the party (rounded up) must succeed
on the associated skill check, with a critical success
counting as 2 successes. If the PCs accrue a number
of successes equal to or less than half of the number
of PCs (rounded up), they accrue 1 AP per obstacle
that they fail in this manner.
So which is it? Does succeeding at half the rolls give you an AP or not?
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Good question. Need the answer, too. I think it is rank 1I am prepping this ATM. Has anyone seen where the info about what level the Lay on Hands is that the students can cast?
Ran this a couple of days ago. Chose it by subtier.
For Subtier 5-6, I chose 3rd rank lay on hands for 18 HP.For Subtier 7-8, I chose 4th rank lay on hands for 24 HP.
No idea if that's right or wrong.
The students don't follow PC rules anyway with 40 HP and AC 15.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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The (other) enemy has Retributive strike but no champion's aura, and retributive strike refers to the aura to determine the range.
I'd ignore the prerequisite of having used twin parry. The enemies were given these reactions for a reason, and to me it seems clear that they are supposed to be able to use the reactions too, so I'd just let them twin riposte as a reaction if someone critically misses them.
Venture-Captain, Australia—NSW—Greater West
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Good question. Need the answer, too. I think it is rank 1I am prepping this ATM. Has anyone seen where the info about what level the Lay on Hands is that the students can cast?
Ran this a couple of days ago. Chose it by subtier.
For Subtier 5-6, I chose 3rd rank lay on hands for 18 HP.
For Subtier 7-8, I chose 4th rank lay on hands for 24 HP.
No idea if that's right or wrong.
The students don't follow PC rules anyway with 40 HP and AC 15.
I ended up doing the same, was running high tier, and gave them 24 hp healing.
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The (other) enemy has Retributive strike but no champion's aura, and retributive strike refers to the aura to determine the range.
I'd ignore the prerequisite of having used twin parry. The enemies were given these reactions for a reason, and to me it seems clear that they are supposed to be able to use the reactions too, so I'd just let them twin riposte as a reaction if someone critically misses them.
My GM went ahead and used the retributive strike, but all of us were pretty sure it was supposed to be Reactive Strike.
My barbarian was our only frontliner. She's got champion dedication but no further champion abilities. Them ALL having retributive strike AND bonus mental damage against me meant I had to be positioned very carefully to avoid a MASSIVE retaliation any time I hit someone. Our healer kept me up, but I was NOT happy with their hypocrisy in using Champion abilities.
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Venture-Agent, Ohio—Columbus
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I ran this twice at CinCityCon this weekend. I ran it with Reactive Strikes the first time and then with Retributuve Strikes the second. Unsurprisingly Reactive Strikes made the combat more deadly, while Retributive Strikes made the fight last longer. I’m not sure there was a clear overall difficulty difference.
Given that Retributive Strike now needs an aura size to be fully defined, it would be nice to have a clarification.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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The other problem was the orders that for these specific guards; we couldn't kill them. Nobody was built to do non-lethal, so we're taking penalties to hit for both fights. Except our casters, who were just SOL because they can't change to non-lethal on the fly. By the last fight I was willing to just eat the infamy and pay it off with AP. But then the trigger warning happens and it feels like a slap in the face to any attempts at nonlethal.
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My post-mortem for a 5-person party at CP18:
Every Pure Legion enemy having Retributive Strike (with 15ft aura) really turned the fights into slog-fests. The first fight alone took almost an hour and a half, which seems too long.
Maybe a reminder to the players that only the hit that knocks the enemy out needs to be non-lethal is a good thing. My party went for 1-2 lethal hits (or spells) before switching to non-lethal and that helped. Also giving a reminder about the availability of saps is not a bad recommendation.
Also the mooks doing +2d6 damage against divine classes is really harsh, which becomes egregious with the boost they get from the captain in the final combat.
IMO, GMs should be using death and dying rules if the PCs want to not kill them.
Yeah, this was a good and necessary recommedation.
Escape through the city: I'm not that worried about the DC's, but I am going to mention how hard the DC's are, as I do with most DC's in minigames (no numbers of course: Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard), otherwise this is'nt going to work
I ran it like this and it worked rather well, even though they ended up failing quite a few of the obstacles.
I was a bit confused about this quote in Part 2:
Repeat the choice, removing options the
PCs have already overcome, until you’ve run a path of
four total obstacles, then continue on to Part 2.
There are:
- 3 obstacles described in Part 1, of which you choose 2- 4 obstacles described in Part 2. Do you make the players go though all four, or do you count the first 2 obstacles from Part 1 in the tally as well (thus increasing the replayability value)? I ran only 2 Part 2 obstacles, and even with that the party exceeded the AP failure threshold for the final encounter.
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Venture-Agent, Ohio—Columbus
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Travel Phase 1 has 4 obstacles and 2 hazards, of which we choose 2 and 1, respectively.
Travel Phase 2 has 4 obstacles and 2 complications, and we're supposed to run all of them (though you might not run all or any of the complications depending on results of the obstacles).
I ran them as written (2 for phase 1, all 4 for phase 2), except I didn't give the players the choice of order for phase 2, but had them determine order randomly. There really isn't enough information in the name/description to make a meaningful choice, and I'd rather the players not get bogged down in overanalyzing something they don't really have enough info to analyze effectively anyway.
The DCs for the 'extra' task in 2 of the obstacles and for the complications are very high in phase 2, so it's likely they will gain a lot more AP there than in phase 1. I took that as an indication that the longer the day wears on the more likely that information gets back to the Restoration Regiment.
For the 3 groups I've run so far, they accumulated between 4 and 9 AP. No one has gotten the best result and no one got the worst result. Seemed to work out pretty well to me.
All 3 groups got enough EP to avoid making a check to convince Captain Rufah.
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Venture-Agent, Ohio—Columbus
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You can only get 4 evidence points from captured legionnaires in the ambush at the research facility, per page 8 under Development. You can get 1 more from the letters they carry.
Reviving Nanaeil (and thereby getting his testimony) nets you another 3 (for a cumulative total of 8). The chart on page 17 tops out at 9-10, implying a maximum of 10EP. Further consider that the 9-10 EP entry references Captain Nanaeil’s revival and testimony. All of this, to me at least, is very strong evidence that the final encounter may have been intended to provide a maximum of 2 EP for captured legionnaires, which is the base number without scaling. I haven’t had to decide if I’m running it that way yet, as all three of my parties have revived Nanaeil, making it a moot point.
If you do limit the final encounter to 2 EP and the party fails to revive the captain, they would have to make a single DC 22 diplomacy check to convince Captain Rufah, making it a moot point again if they succeed on that check. Anyway, those are my early morning musings on the subject. Take what you will from them.
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The (other) enemy has Retributive strike but no champion's aura, and retributive strike refers to the aura to determine the range.
I'd ignore the prerequisite of having used twin parry. The enemies were given these reactions for a reason, and to me it seems clear that they are supposed to be able to use the reactions too, so I'd just let them twin riposte as a reaction if someone critically misses them.
https://2e.aonprd.com/MonsterAbilities.aspx?ID=31
Retributive strike is monster ability, not champion one in this case.