PFS2 6-19: What Walks Again

[Matt Duval]

Hello!

Running this Wednesday so wanted to open up a space to ask questions.

First up, in the final encounter the Locust Horde ability refers to ending persistent damage from the aura. Is the Disgorge Swarm damage intended to be persistent? It looks like there was a name change from Locust Infestation that didn't get cleaned up in the high tier so I'm wondering if the ability changed and the reference to persistent damage is an artifact of an older version.

I'll come back with more as I reread things.

[Matt Duval]

Ran this last night at high tier with 27 CP and 6 players. The Shemhazian wound up being the scariest thing. Adventure ran very long, about 6 hours, most of it in part 2. I included the optional encounter on the theory that it made sense narratively / keeping the tension up as they had just finished off the last of the first wave when round 5 hit, but from a time management perspective, I probably should have skipped it. Players said they had fun, so a success regardless!

[The.Vortex]

I played this yesterday and prepared it to be run in a week this morning. Looking at the skill section and then the treasure bundle allocation, something definitely doesn't make sense here.

The tresure bundles state:

Quote:

Aiding the Populace: 1 Treasure Bundle for each task completed, up to 6 Treasure Bundles.

But the Aiding the Populace tasks CANNOT all be completed. Two of them are open ended! And two tasks list treasures, one of which is just gold (which is useless for the rest of the adventure) but doesn't seem to be taken into account for the treasure bundles at all!

The closest I could get to the written TB allocation would be that you would have to reach the listed threasholds for things to happen in every single challenge. So you would need: (group size: n)

Task 1: n points
Task 2: n points (possibly without doing any lethal damage)
Task 3: n points
Task 4: 3 points (non-scaling - why?) (possibly with at least one person needing to be there every single round)
Task 5: floor(n/2) points, but only with certain skills, or a perception success in round 3 (WTF? Doing perception here in other rounds doesn't do ANYTHING?!)
Task 6: 3 points (non-scaling - why?)

For a total of floor(3.5*n/2)+6 points needed
A party of 4 would need 20 points, a party of 5 23 and a party of 6 27 points. From a total of 12, 15 or 18 turns. That means, you need between 1.5 and 1.67 points per turn, perfectly distributed and sometimes taking special considerations into account to reach the full rewards. Most of them against a standard DC for that level - which, at this level - starts to become pretty hard unless you have good attributes, proficiency and a skill item for a skill. While reaching that MIGHT be possible, it is EXTREMELY unlikely, bordering on impossible.

I would suggest to completely disregard the Treasure Bundles for this section and instead give out 2 per round the characters are helping - no matter how succesfull or not. Or maybe just give out the 6 regardless of what they do?

Another weird issue, though far less severe, are the success conditions. This is the first time I can think of, where reaching the secondary condition is kind of automatic, as is the faction mission, while the primary success condition can be failed despite completing the adventure.
I appreciate what the writers did here by swapping them around to emphasize that helping the populace was the primary goal, but unless you explicitly state that to the players in the conclusion / aftermath, it will have no effect whatsoever.

[Mullog]

Hello,
I am preparing this scenario for an upcoming convention. I understand that it is primarily combat-oriented.

Hesla Motivation:

However, can someone explain to me what motivates Hesla Ambersplitter to destroy the village of Pimatsih? The only “explanation” given is that she wants to honor her title of “Breaker of Cities.” That seems a bit thin...Furthermore, I read that Hesla wanted to march on Iz (the former capital of Sarkoris) to regain power. However, in the Lost Omens World Guide, it is stated that Iz was completely abandoned to the demons because it was too dangerous and destroyed to be rebuilt. So has the situation changed?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

[The.Vortex]

To quote "Pitch Meeting" on YT: So that the movie can happen!

Hesla's complete story and motivation are SO weird that I honestly can't give you any better advice. That NPC doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me :(

[EyeballTsunami]

Can someone tell me how Morale Points went for you?

I don't see anything regarding them taking actions. My team of 4 garnered 3 Morale Points at first, then in their ten minute break went back and nailed some crits and have 5 Morale Points now.

One part says that these morale points are for section 2. The part about "Using Morale Points" says they can be used for any combat encounter..and really why could they go back and get more for that ten minutes after part 2 if they can't use them in part 3?

But now they are sitting on 5 Morale points. Can they just opt to "use them all right now" and blast the Husk with 20d12 Bludgeoning Damage and use them all up?

Probably I'm going to limit them to one point per round, but there isn't any direction to do that.

Did any parties engage with the morale point system? Anyone have thoughts on them?

Thanks!

[logsig]

When I ran this, the party used some of their morale points in Part 2. They did have some left over but didn't even try to use them in Part 3.

It does say in the "Using Morale Points" paragraph that the points can be used in "any combat" but that might be intended to mean "any combat in Part 2", because the "Using Morale Points" paragraph is placed inside Part 2. Part 3 happens outside the town and you could conceivably argue that the citizens described as "fleeing in horror" aren't going to go out there to help.

And yes, there would be no mechanical point in going back for more after Part 2 if you couldn't use them in Part 3, but maybe the party just wants to be helpful to the town, regardless of rewards. When I ran it, the party didn't go back for more.

Aside from that, though, I see no reason why they couldn't use all available points in one round.

[Gayel Nord]

The.Vortex wrote:

To quote "Pitch Meeting" on YT: So that the movie can happen!

Hesla's complete story and motivation are SO weird that I honestly can't give you any better advice. That NPC doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me :(

It is easy for me. She want to burn the world who hurted her into cinder.