A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 1-5.
Tragedy has struck, and the Society’s attention must turn from academics to action as they infiltrate a seemingly impenetrable facility in the heart of Ostenso, one of Cheliax’s greatest ports. They must act quickly, for only the distraction of a national holiday can provide the PCs the cover they need to get in, get the job done, and get out without drawing the attention of an entire city’s guards.
I played this at a convention in Feb '17 with a six person party with best-case results.
First, be aware, this scenario is written such that you are expected to proceed without ANY combat. ZERO. Had I known that going in, I may have tempered my expectations. There may be combat potential, but it was made known from the mission briefing that it is sub-optimal. Had I known that before sign ups, I may have avoided the series entirely.
Also, this scenario is not suitable for certain character types. Paladins in particular, and Lawful characters to a lesser extent, would be hard pressed to justify certain actions. Again, this should be ixpressly disclosed beforehand. Frankly, the VC should have sense enough to only recruit suitable characters, but that's a discussion for another day.
The NPCs and story were adequately fleshed out and had reasonable motivations.
The puzzle, while very creative, was solved in under a minute. As I generally detest puzzles within my games, I thought this was ideal. YMMV.
The chase scene flavor text made some sense, though in application, was found lacking.
There was a lot I liked about this scenario but a couple moments of real frustration spoiled the experience for me.
The Puzzle:
I can't really see how a combination lock is so different from a normal lock that it changes how the knock spell works. Apparently it's okay for a rogue to use disable device to bypass the puzzle but knock needs to be punished. Honestly I think the spell is over powered but that's a discussion to have with the people who publish the rules. The party didn't have a rogue and we were tasked with a prison break. I picked up scrolls of knock because I expected them to do something, if there was any indication that the spell could be stymied so easily my character wouldn't have wasted the gold.
We did spend a few minutes trying to actually solve the puzzle but my experience with PFS puzzles is that the party either sorts it out in the first minute or twenty minutes are wasted talking about it. Trying to force a party to solve a puzzle that should be easy enough to bypass by other means feels unnecessarily punitive to me.
The Rescue:
Another frustrating instance of feeling shafted by this scenario for not having someone with disable device. A party of two wizards, a paladin, a ranger and brawler look a machine and the best advice we can come up with is well let's toy around with it and hope that if it starts hurting people we can smash it faster than it can kill.
The flow of the combat to shut down the machine before it killed anyone was entertaining enough but I resent that we had a fairly competent party with a decent skill range and my character had to make a suggestion as stupid as let's start flipping switches hope no one dies because there was no other solution available.
The initial infiltration was fairly entertaining and the chase scene towards the end was probably one of the best of it's kind but really the frustration that is the middle of this scenario makes it one that I won't ever bother to GM because I don't want to spend my time enforcing the inane mechanics given by the scenario.
Im a fan of infiltration type scenarios, and this one was done well. Additionally, it appears that it could be quite difficult for a party full of PCs incapable of successful roleplay who just want to kill everything, which is another positive in my book (punishing murderhoboism, I mean).
Im a fan of this chase. It was interesting and unlike some of the other ones.
I am, especially, a fan of the overarching plot this scenario help builds. The Zarta/Tancred story has been my favorite plot done in PFS for a long time, and this really really impressed me. This opens up so many questions for me about how all of this is working out, and now I have to wait hoever much longer to find out where the story goes next? Is the Society going to war with Cheliax? Is Taldor (or at least Morilla) in league with House Thrune in trying to get rid of Zarta? I want to know now!
-1 star for you for not giving me the answers now! jkjk :P
So...
4/5 stars for an excellent scenario! Once I get a chance to run this thing, I'll likely up this to 5/5, but I want a chance to run a table of it first.
When I wrote the review for part 2, I expressed my hopes that the third part would be equally good. If so, this would be my favorite multi-part story arc. Now that I've played this final part, I can happily conclude that yes, it is the best three-parter Paizo has released to date.
Just like the first part, this part tries to get players to think outside the box and use all their talents in various ways. However this time it is more of a sandbox and I really like that kind of scenarios. You obviously receive some suggestions in the form of items the party gets at the start of the scenario, but ultimately it's up to you how you infiltrate, explore and, more importantly, escape. There are a plethora of options available and only your imagination can limit them, though as was the case for the second part, skill monkeys remain invaluable.
Following the prison portion, which is the majority of the scenario, there is a small chase scene and a (potential) fight. My party didn't struggle at all with the fight and I'd even go as far as saying it's too easy. It has flavor, but it just wasn't remotely challenging for us. The chase scene, well, that also wasn't particularly challenging since we had a lot of skills available to help us avoid capture. But what really made it stand out from similar scenes, was the fact that instead of getting successes so you could continue on to the next 'problem', you were now trying to delay your pursuers. It's a twist that at first felt a bit strange, but that worked out surprisingly well. It's something that's memorable and that hopefully will return in some shape or form in the future.
As I said, this part concludes my favorite three-parter to date, and I highly recommend the entire series to those who read this. On a personal note, I can't wait to run this for my friends as I'm sure they'll enjoy it just as much as I did.
I think I can see the problem causing the download issues, but unfortunately cannot rectify it myself. I'm bringing it to our tech team's attention to address, and hope to be able to provide an update soon (likely not tonight).
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Chris Lambertz wrote:
I think I can see the problem causing the download issues, but unfortunately cannot rectify it myself. I'm bringing it to our tech team's attention to address, and hope to be able to provide an update soon (likely not tonight).
Have not yet processed these for VOs, look out for the email notification later tonight :)
Thanks Chris. I'm having the same problem as Drago95 in that it appears in downloads but will not start process when click on download link. I'll try in the morning.
I think I can see the problem causing the download issues, but unfortunately cannot rectify it myself. I'm bringing it to our tech team's attention to address, and hope to be able to provide an update soon (likely not tonight).
I was starting to wonder what was going on. Good to see it isn't a problem on my side. Hope the resolution is found soon.
Our Tech Team has put in a temporary fix so folks can now download this new scenario, but are still working to isolate the root cause and get it corrected. Sorry for the inconvenience there folks!
The fix has NOT worked for me. Still no download link, it's not appearing in My Downloads, it was still sitting in my cart (removed it now to see if that had any effect, but no), AND I think I've paid for it twice now :'-(
The fix has NOT worked for me. Still no download link, it's not appearing in My Downloads, it's still sitting in my cart, AND I think I've paid for it twice now :'-(
Shaun, you might want to post about this, and include your order numbers in the Customer Service forum.
