Critical Failure: Let's Dunk on Pathfinder Society (1E) Scenarios

[Timrod]

Summary

: Before we do character introductions, I have to read the mission briefing. These are at the start of every PFS scenario.

"Venture-Captain Roderus sits at his desk in the lodge beneath the popular Winding Road Inn in Katapesh. Maps cover every wall of his workspace, and precarious stacks of journals and papers nearly reach to the ceiling.

The venture-captain glances up from his work. “Welcome, Pathfinders. I hope your journey here was not too arduous. I have a fascinating assignment for you.”

He plucks a single sheet of paper from the middle of pile on his desk. “This is a letter from the Osiriani investigator Amenira, who works with the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye. Mercy, the town she mentions in her reports, wasn’t even on our map until now.

It’s a small settlement out in the Mana Wastes. Magic is unpredictable out in the Wastes, and it sometimes coalesces into deadly storms. People in Alkenstar reported seeing one of these magical disturbances heading in the direction of Mercy, but the town weathered the fearsome storm without so much as a scratch.”

: What the fuck is any of this shit?

: Fun story, the actual scenario has a box that basically reads “If you want to understand any of this, go buy these other books”. Anyway, there’s a handout I’m supposed to give everyone, but I’ll just type it out.

Player Handout #1: Amenira’s Report

After six months in Mercy, the local priests are still not totally cooperative. I am still referred to as “the outsider” and nominally kept under curfew, though they’ve stopped caring when I break it, so long as I keep to myself.

The rivalry between the carpenters and blacksmiths is intensifying, and I’ve noticed restrained violence between the two groups. I will investigate further.

The infilitration of the weaver’s home was successful, though brief. I have not yet obtained a sample of the ointment.

My illness has been growing steadily worse, which has complicated my work as it is becoming increasingly difficult to hide. Something shielded Mercy from another mana storm a few days ago. The storm should have razed the town, but it split into two fronts that bypassed the town before recombining. I strongly doubt that the priests here have the power to evoke such a miracle. Is there an artifact in or near Mercy? Further inquiries are required.

: Oh, and anyone who has Knowledge (Religion) can make a roll.

: Is it going to lead to another plot dump?

: Yes.

: I roll a 1 on purpose.

: You make it.

: What the fuck? How?

: Knowledge checks aren’t an automatic failure on a 1, plus you worship Nethys and have a +14 on a DC 15 check.

: You know that the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye is the largest temple of Nethys, the god of magic, on Golarion. Golarion is the setting for Pathfinder.

The venture-captain clears his throat. “One of my contacts at the temple received this missive from her four months ago, and he hasn’t heard anything from her since. I’m sending you to Mercy to figure out why. If she’s still there, ask her why she hasn’t contacted anyone in months and help her finish her investigation; if she isn’t, find out what happened to her. While you are there, see how much of the mystery of Mercy you can unravel. Several of the clergy within the temple are intensely curious about why the mana storm didn’t level the town, and so am I. I will gladly provide you with additional pay for the information that you retrieve. I’ve booked a ship to the city of Alkenstar, which is a few days’ journey from Mercy itself. The ship departs in three hours. If you have any questions, ask them now. You’ll have time to purchase supplies when you arrive.”

: I’m not sure why that’s even a check. Each scenario also includes some answers to questions people might have. In my experience, no one ever asked them.

: What I used to do when I GMed was go down the Q&A part without anyone needing to ask anything, since 95% of the time people started joking around when I called for questions.

Q: What do you know about the Mana Wastes?

A: “It’s a dangerous place, particularly the farther you stray from pockets of civilization. The war between Geb and Nex millennia ago devastated the land, physically and metaphysically, and the scars linger to this day. Expect areas where magic doesn’t work or becomes unpredictable. Clouds of poison and storms of terrible power erupt spontaneously. There are mutated creatures, undead horror (sic), and monstrous scavengers, among other things. Use your best judgment, be ready for danger,and don’t go wandering off into the Wastes more than absolutely necessary.”

Q: Who are Geb and Nex?

A: “Geb and Nex were two of the greatest mages in Golarion’s history. In the Age of Destiny, they founded neighboring nations, which they named after themselves. Eventually, their territorial ambitions led to a bitter war that raged for over a thousand years. They drew upon the most powerful of spells to unleash devastation upon each other, inflicting an untold numbers of casualties and ruining the land itself in the border between their nations.”

Q: Do you know anything else about the town of Mercy?

“It’s a small town roughly twenty miles south of Alkenstar. Ask around when you arrive in Alkenstar, and I’m certain you’ll find someone who knows more about it than I do.”

: And with that, you’re all off to Mercy via Alkenstar via boat. Does anyone have Diplomacy or Knowledge (Local)?

: I have Diplomacy.

: Do I actually have to roll this?

: You do.

: Fine.

: I had two sets of fancy dice back when I played. The clear one (on top) is synthetic opal, while the bottom one is lapis lazuli.

: That’s an 8, plus 13 is 21.

: I got a 33.

: The information you get is based off how high you rolled. Because this scenario is a clusterfuck, I’m going to just give you everything, even though the highest DC is 25.

: For 15+, you know that there are rumors of a vampire hunting travelers on the road to Mercy.

: Is it the sparkly kind of vampire, hunting lone travelers for love?

: No. For 20+, you get “The people of Mercy have a reputation for being insular and extremely devout to their god, Robori. The town has rigid, inflexible rules, but the quality of its harvests encourages traders to occasionally stop by the town to purchase produce.”

: The vampire’s a wizard and they’re feeding people to it intentionally.

: And for 25+, you get “For the past year, an Osiriani woman from Mercy named Amenira came to Alkenstar every month. She traded for supplies and sent large collections of letters before returning to Mercy.”

: I don’t get it. There’s a vampire, but the entire town worships a nature god? Who are we beating up here?

: Now that we’ve got the briefing out of the way, it’s time for introductions. Who’s going to start?

: Let me start! Before you towers Estelle Sparkleheart, a three-species sparklefur with the body of a cat, the ears and tail of a fox, and the wings and horns of a dragon. Her polished, gleaming holy symbol of Apsu, god of dragons, hangs from her neck.

: I’m Louis Cypher, human exploiter wizard. I hurl fireballs for lots of damage and I make skill checks. Past that, I’m a pathetic weakling. Please don’t hurt me.

: I’m a 5’ 2" half-elf cowering behind her 7 foot tall idealized half-dragon boyfriend armed with a spear bigger than I am.

: And I’m Brock. I bash things with a big Japanese sword.

: When I played this scenario for real, I had this guy and his adult son at the table. The son was an adult My Little Pony fan who played only lesbians and tried to have sex with everything. He was maybe a few years younger than me.

: Originally, one of the vtubers was going to be a pony and basically be that guy, but I couldn’t find an artist for it, so I replaced that on the wheel of bad vtuber ideas with a Hazbin OC. You know how the rest went.

: We also had this guy I called Dipshit McOracle. He’s a lawyer and would spend hours poring over options only to make the same character (an oracle, which is a hybrid arcane/divine caster) every time. His characters all sucked.

: Moving on. You take the boat to Alkenstar and head down the road to the town of Mercy. All of a sudden, an arrow lands in front of you. Roll initiative.

: Paizo used to sell these maps on giant plastic sheets you could mark up, and they used them as frequently as possible. I have a blank map but I’m horrible at drawing, so I’ll just edit the image to show where everyone is.

: It’s a little bit small, and I used Shovel for the eidolon, but this is where everyone starts. I am actually rolling dice, I’m just not taking photos every time I do.

: Natural 20! I’m going first, total of 26.

: 16.

: 23.

: I have an 11, and my eidolon has a 19.

: G1 rolled a 12, and G2 rolled a 4. Those are gnolls. The hyenas got a 6 and a 9 for H1 and H2, respectively. Mara, you are up first.

: Can I see the closer group of enemies from where I am?

: Because of the angle and distance, you probably can.

: I cast a fireball right here, using one point of my arcane pool to increase my DC by 2. I also reduce the range to 5 feet, boosting it to 11d6 damage.

: So, uh.. funny story. There’s supposed to be unstable magic here that boosts your caster level by 1.

: 12d6. Do they survive?

: No.

: This is just kind of how PFS scenarios go. Combat is a joke. Even if Mara wasn’t min-maxed, he’d still have a pretty decent shot of oneshotting the gnolls.

: The party spends a full round just moving, and the gnoll fires a single shot. This encounter wasn’t planned very well because the gnoll starts so far away that it takes penalties to hit with its longbow.

: It tries to shoot Mara, rolls a 3, and with the modifiers is at a 1.

: I’m just gonna sit back here and laugh at it for thinking it can kill an asura.

: I’ll take a shot at it with my longbow. Does a 22 hit?

: Yeah.

: It gets shot for six damage.

: I’ll just speed this up, since between The Shape and the eidolon, the gnoll is going to get demolished.

: Here’s the fun part about this: the game tells you to use a weaker version of the enemies for four players. I didn’t do that. If I had, everyone except Astra could one hit kill them in melee.

: And that’s it? A couple of speed bumps and we’re in town?

: Yeah.. sure. Maybe you should check out that cave first.

: What cave?

: There’s a cave?

: This scenario has one major flaw. You see this part of the map?

: That’s meant to be a cave. The game never mentions it’s there unless someone asks about it.

: The thing is, on a lot of the generic maps, stuff like that gets glossed over because it’s not actually meant to be there - and the players figure this out quickly.

: When I played this, we skipped the cave. About two hours later, the GM outright went “Yeah, there’s no possible way you could understand or know this” and got up and left. We never saw him again.

: Yeah, there’s a cave the game outright never tells you about.

: Is there a boulder in there?

: No, but there is:

“Pictographs on the walls of this shallow cave show an indistinct winged creature navigating through a sea of swirling patterns and black dots. A clumsily constructed altar sits at the center of the cave. Dozens of small niches are carved into the wall, most filled with an odd assortment of items; teeth, scraps of clothing, a jar of white liquid, a wooden staff, several pieces of parchment, a cloth pouch, a leather satchel, and several identical wooden dolls.”

: This is somebody’s weird sex dungeon, isn’t it.

: Why the dolls? Are they cave dolls?

: They’re described as being of “exceptionally high quality” and nearly identical. Everyone can make a perception roll if they want.

: I’m the only one who has points in it, and I rolled a 2.

: In the low tier you’d notice something, but it’s unimportant anyway. In fact, I’m not even sure why they have you make checks in here because none of it matters to understanding what’s going on.

: I forgot, I can detect magic. Is that altar magic?

: No, but the parchment and a bag in the corner are.

: And?

: The parchment is two scrolls. One is Speak with Plants, and one is Mount. The bag has a handgun, four bullets, and a potion that silences the gun.

: Gun’s mine. Don’t even care how many penalties I take.

: You’re not taking the gun. I’ve seen you with a gun before. It’s like drugs to you.

: We should sell it.

: Just trust me with the gun. I swear I won’t shoot the first person I see with it.

: You’re going to shoot the first person you see with it. We all know how you operate.

: I mean, I can’t shoot the first person I see because of that stupid “no PVP” rule. But think about it, I could summon a horse and shoot people. Not well, because mounted combat sucks, but I could.

: Let’s just move on.

: The town is a mile down the road, and is made up of around a hundred wooden buildings surrounded by a wooden stockade. There’s a sign attached to the gate, which reads “Mercy does not allow dishonesty, firearms, or large weapons within town limits. Respect the curfew.”

: Fuck this place, let’s go somewhere else. There’s no fun allowed here.

: You see a guy who is a stereotypical old west sheriff, complete with the star badge on his chest. He opens the gate and introduces himself as Sheriff Molume.

: He says that before he lets you into town, he needs you to disarm and let him confiscate your weapons. The only thing he’ll let you keep are light melee weapons and quarterstaves.

: That puts me down to my spiked gauntlet.

: And makes my eidolon useless.

: I tell him to fuck himself. Fireball, one arcane reservoir to increase DC by 2, reducing the size to 5 feet for 11d6 damage.

: You’d kill him in one hit. He’s only got like 24 HP, though you wouldn’t know that given how bad the layout is on this thing.

: Normally when a plot-relevant NPC shows up, the scenario either posts their stat block immediately or tells you what page it’s on.

: This is necessary for a number of reasons - the scenario suggests improving his disposition with Diplomacy, which requires him to roll an opposing Sense Motive check.

: The thing is, there’s no stat block for the sheriff. He does have stats, but they’re buried in a footnote three pages down and aren’t printed.

: When I played this, the GM didn’t see this part (and I can understand why) and so he got really confused as to how we were supposed to do anything.

: Even though I should let you kill him, I’m going to have to rule you can’t so we can finish the scenario and see how dumb it is.

: This is a trap, right? Why don’t we camp outside of town, and then send the two people in who don’t need weapons for combat in the morning?

: We could knock him out and tie him up somewhere.

: Let me tell you how this part went in real life. We had three people arguing over whether to try and kill the sheriff somehow. This went on for half an hour.

: Meanwhile I was sitting there going “It’s not going to matter, the combat in this is for babies”, but no one listens to me.

: Finally, the pony guy’s dad and one other person (who I won’t name) tied the sheriff up and threw him in the weapon locker. That other person was the reason I quit.

: It’s not a trap. Just so we avoid a multi-hour debate.

: Good enough.

: Fine. I’ll give up my weapon.

: He opens the gate and now you can ask him anything you want.

: We should ask about that missing woman, right? What was her name again?

: It was “Amenira.” I ask him where Amenira is.

Sheriff: “Of course I do. She lives in the orange house on the west side of town. She’s been living here, oh.. about a year now. Every month or so, she goes to Alkenstar to send letters to her family. Makes some good toys, she does. Or at least, she did. She’s been in Alkenstar a mighty long time. Maybe she left, but it’s awful rude of her not to have said goodbye to everyone.”

: How long has she been gone?

Sherriff: “Mister, I don’t like your attitude.”

: Roll Diplomacy twice.

: First roll is a 33, second is a 17.

: You’ve made him like you enough that he tells you she’s been gone for two months.

: In the real game, the GM grabbed the character sheets for the two people who had tied the sheriff up and marked them both as “evil”, which in PFS means you’re dead unless you get an atonement spell.

: I think this was part of why he quit.

: I want to know about this curfew. What’s the deal there? Is it because of the vampires?

Sheriff: “Oh, there aren’t any vampires. We’ve got lots of bats because of the cashew trees, but the curfew is because we don’t want outsiders meddling in our ceremonies.”

: Why haven’t we beaten this guy up again?

: If he’s a vampire, he’d still die in this amount of sunlight.

: What if he’s a cultist?

: We already know it’s not a trap. Let’s follow him.

: The sheriff takes you to a bunkhouse on the edge of town, and points out a wooden box next to the door, which is where the villagers will drop off food for you.

: The box has a flag on it that you can raise to get his attention if you need him.

: So now what?

: Are there guards outside?

: Not as far as you can tell.

: I can probably look out one of the windows and light some of the houses on fire.

: Are the doors locked? I’ll try and open the front door.

: The front door isn’t locked. It has a lock from the inside you can use, but it doesn’t have one on the outside.

: When we got to this part, the entire party (minus two people, those being the pony guy’s dad and I) was struck by that problem the beta version of Dishonored had. They didn’t want to leave, and tried to stop us from leaving.

: The scenario explicitly intends for the players to sneak out at night, but really doesn’t do a very good job of signaling it.

: I vote we all sneak out and walk in on the temple at night. They’ll all be clustered up that way and I can kill them in one move.

: What we should do is have two of us go and two of us stay behind in case someone comes to check on us.

: I can hear Dipshit McOracle screaming “NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY”. I hated that guy.

: Who’s sneaking out?

: I will.

: You’re made of brightly colored fur and glitter. I’ve seen parades stealthier than you.

: So you can go with her. You can cast invisibility, right?

: What happens if the vampires show up? Actually, forget I said that. The vampires are probably total pushovers.

: I’m making this party significantly more coordinated than any real PFS party would be. Typically, you’d have at least two people on laptops or their phones the entire time.

: As I recall the pony guy and the nameless asshole were big into Hearthstone and were playing that the entire time.

: What will we do while they’re out?

: That’s the beauty of playing online. I’m going to alt-tab back into Dispatch.

: What’s that?

: You don’t know? Imagine a game full of the most pathetic adult men you’ve ever seen. It’s a superhero visual novel.

: We’re sneaking out to the temple as soon as it gets dark.

: The temple is easy enough to find given that it’s the largest structure in town. All the houses you pass by on the way have thick orange curtains covering the windows, and you don’t see anyone in the street.

: Can we take a look inside without being spotted?

: Once you get closer, you can hear someone giving a sermon. You also notice that the temple has a really strong smell to it. No one has noticed you yet.

: I can’t sneak with this armor on. I think it’s up to Mara.

: I rolled a 9 on stealth.

: You get closer and can see inside. The building is arranged like an amphitheater, with a bunch of benches surrounding a very old, very large tree.

: The inside has a very strong smell, and you can see the priestess dumping oil on the tree’s roots. You can tell that the oil is the source of the scent.

: They’re not performing any sacrifices?

: Not as far as you can see. The priestess is blessing people and pouring oil on them.

: I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The temple is completely pointless.

: The entire reason it exists, and I am not making this up, is to be a Guardians of the Galaxy reference.

: Then what’s the point? I’m getting out of here.

: There’s really nothing going on in there?

: Nothing at all. They’re worshiping a tree and dumping oil all over. I think they’re just morons. There’s no vampire here.

: Let’s go back to the house before someone comes to check on us, or the temple empties out.

: Roll a perception check.

: Shit.

: I got a 27.

: I don’t want to talk about what I rolled.

: Astra can see what looks like a small child sneaking around in the street, except they’re covered in vines and their neck looks broken.

: What knowledge check to identify it? Should I just burn it?

: Arcana.

: Rolled a 5, so that’s a 20.

: You identify it as not a person, but a soulbound doll. It looks just like the ones you found in the cave, and it has definitely spotted you.

: It walks up to you and hands you a scroll. The scroll is a spell called Enter Image that allows you to shift your consciousness to anything that looks like you.

: Then it looks at you and says “I am Nira. I do not know you. You are not from Mercy. You find Mercy. You find murder.”

: Where did you come from?

: The doll walks over to you and tugs on your clothes. She pretty clearly wants to be picked up.

: I’ll pick her up, even if it looks a little strange.

: The doll points in a direction, but doesn’t say anything.

: I ask it if it wants to go back to the house with us. We can do this tomorrow.

: The doll doesn’t seem to have a problem with that. If it’s okay with everyone, I’m going to just skip you to the next morning.

: This isn’t very historically accurate.

: It isn’t?

: We never had a central dispatch station back in the 60s. The insurance companies would’ve had a coronary over all the property damage from villain attacks.

: We’re back. Did the sheriff show up?

: If he did, we were both too busy watching this.

: We found a creepy doll. If it looks at you funny, feel free to destroy it.

: Morning comes. All of your spells and abilities are fully recharged.

: There was nothing in the temple? Let’s go check out Amenira’s house.

: As soon as you mention that name, the doll perks up and tries to get you to pick her up.

: She really put her soul in a doll? That’s the Hell equivalent of being free experience.

: Let’s pick her up and have her guide us like she was trying to do last night.

: The doll guides you to a house that stands out because it’s the only one painted orange.

: Can we get in the house without the neighbors noticing?

: The door is unlocked, so that should be easy enough. There’s a lot of stuff in there I’m not going to bother going over because it’s part of a pointless side plot.

: Thank fuck.

: This scenario has an entire side plot centering on trying to discover the town’s secret. It is very dumb and has no bearing on anything.

: In fact, the scenario never really ties the main plot of “Solve the murder” with the side plot in a way that’s digestible to the players.

: The side plot revolves around buttering up the villagers, which involves discovering the “unwritten rules of Mercy” that include things like “no wearing blue”.

: I’m going to make this work in a way that makes more sense, but just understand that in an actual game where half the players are desperately trying to escape their wives for a few hours and the other half are on their phones the whole time or severely sleep deprived (me), no one would figure this shit out.

: So, what’s in the house?

: You see a bunch of workbenches and woodworking equipment used for making the dolls. There are a few unfinished ones still sitting around which look identical to the one following you around.

: You find her spellbook on a desk, which has a bunch of spells you could theoretically rip out and turn into scrolls.

: Hold on a second there. Let me see that.

: Never mind, most of these spells I already know, and the rest are trash.

: There’s also a scroll of Make Whole for some reason. I guess if you need to heal the doll. Oh, and a bottle of polish that you can rub on your armor to kill any plants you walk through.

: That’s oddly specific.

: I’m taking that and dumping it on the sheriff’s garden.

: As soon as you grab it, you can hear screaming coming from outside.

: I’ll rush outside, because that’s what a hero does. I assume everyone’s going to follow?

: We should grab our weapons.

: The scenario never actually maps the town, so I’ll rule you can stop by the carriage house on the way to where the screams are coming from.

: The carriage house is open, and you can see the weapon locker in plain sight. It’s closed and locked.

: I think between the eidolon and myself we can break the door off it.

: The scenario doesn’t give a break DC or object stats for the locker, or even tell me what the locker is made of so I could approximate it. Roll a strength check.

: 24.

: You break the door clean off the hinges. Your weapons are inside. The screams outside are getting louder, and they’re punctuated by a loud wailing noise. You also notice the doll has walked off somewhere.

: By the time you get outside, you see a giant manta ray flying overhead and three distinct swarms of tiny bats.

: They’re dumping a cloaker on us? After how badly that one jobbed in Baldur’s Gate?

: Roll initiative.

: This fight is particularly dumb because the scenario writer nerfed the enemies to hell from their usual stats. Let me show you.

: This is the bat swarm from the scenario. Swarms take 1.5x damage from area of effect spells, but are immune to weapon damage.

: Mara could kill these by breathing on them. Now let’s look at the stats from the Bestiary, which the scenario cites.

: Gee, that sure is a lot less HP. These would still be in oneshot range, but Mara would need to use a fireball as opposed to something like burning hands.

: I’m going to skip the rolls and show you exactly how this played out when I did it.

: I’m up first. Glitterdust on the cloaker, and yes I’ll blow an arcane pool point for +2 DC to boost it to 20.

: Yep, it fails. The cloaker is now blind. It loses its dexterity bonus to its AC, loses 2 AC on top of that, has to make a check to move at more than half speed, and has a 50% chance to miss you on top of taking a -4 penalty to hit.

: My eidolon stabs it.

: Natural 19, and I rolled a 25 to confirm a critical. Does that confirm?

: Confirmed.

: 32 damage.

: The cloaker goes and desperately tries to run away… only it can’t see where it’s going and has to roll an acrobatics check.

: It crashes to the ground and is prone. This thing is dead no matter what. Roll perception.

: 33.

: You see a couple with their child, who ran out of their house after the bats poured in through the windows. The kid is a little girl and her skin is sprouting leaves and flowers. They quickly dart back inside.

: …Is that the “mystery” of the town? That their kids are fucked up mutants?

: Yep. The scenario never really tells how you’re meant to figure it out.

: When I played it, we never figured this whole part out. The cloaker died in one hit, and the GM quit at that point.

: The problem is that the scenario writer didn’t account for that. What’s meant to happen.. kind of makes no sense. The cloaker is supposed to fly away.

: Now, you might think “Oh, the players are supposed to make the connection that the cave is the cloaker’s lair” and you’d be right.. only you’re not.

: No, it’s supposed to fly to a completely unrelated cave that has the plot token the players need to finish the scenario, and they’re supposed to follow it.

: Judging by that look on your face, we just broke the scenario.

: We could always go back and not kill it, or do what Baldur’s Gate did with Raphael on that run where you killed him.

: You know what, that’d be too dignified for this. Instead, the gun you picked up earlier starts talking. It is a magic talking gun. The magic talking gun tells you to go to a cave you’ve never seen before that’s five miles outside of town.

: Can I use the magic talking gun to shoot the sheriff?

: Yes. His head explodes like an overripe pumpkin.

: This whole thing is pretty ridiculous. Where would we even go, assuming the cloaker survived?

: So that’s the best part. You go to a random cave, fight what’s left of the cloaker, and then get into an encounter that would be a threat except it isn’t.

: Let’s run it anyway. You go through this cave where the cloaker would be, and then walk into a closet where it stored Amenira’s dead body. No points for guessing what killed her.

: Bad writing? A lack of editing?

: You know what, let’s go with that. Then you come into the final room of the cave, where there’s a giant talking seed.

: You somehow know the seed is what’s causing the mutations and also what makes the agriculture work in the middle of the desert. Will you take it?

: Yeah. Fuck these idiots.

: It summons three giant shambling mounds of fungus because this is The Last of Us now.

: The three Gluts are the fungus mounds, and the zombie is a fungus zombie. Roll initiative.

: 11.

: 7.

: 5, and my eidolon got a 21.

: 20.

: As for the Gluts, the one closest to you got a 10, the one in the middle has a 16, and the one in the back got a 7. Callie, your eidolon is up first.

: He’ll take a five-foot step and stab at the middle one.

: Five-foot steps are about 90% of the movement in Pathfinder. You can do them without using a move action, and they don’t provoke attacks of opportunity.

: I forgot to mention, the floors are all difficult terrain. I assume you put the anti-plant oil on. It covers two people. Who got it?

: My eidolon and The Shape, I would think.

: No problems with that.

: They’re both melee, so it makes sense.

: Does a 20 hit?

: It sure does.

: It takes 15 damage.

: It’s injured, but still alive. Shape?

: I’ll move forward and attack.. and I rolled a 1. That’s not going to work.

: Next up is the middle Glut, which fires a puff of spores at.. Astra. Does a 15 hit your touch AC? Not your full AC.

: Touch AC is a concept that only exists in 3.5E and earlier. It bypasses most forms of armor and is effectively a roll against 10 + your dexterity modifier.

: It does.

: Roll a will save.

: I rolled a 30! There’s no way it works, right?

: You successfully ignore its mind control. And now, it’s time to end the fight. Mara?

: FIREBALL. 5 foot radius, 11d6, you know the drill by now.

: Front one rolled a 20, middle one rolled a 17, back one rolled a 20. They take half damage.

: The middle one dies, the other two are on their last legs. Oh, and the zombie. The zombie’s dead.

: Now the front Glut goes. Same deal, it’s aiming a spore spray at Mara.. but it rolls a total of 9. That’s not going to hit anyone.

: Astra, you’re up.

: I cast Searing Light on the one in the front.

: If a 20 hit it, I’m sure an 18 will hit its touch AC. It takes 10 damage.

: It’s dead. At this point, combat is effectively over and you’ve won the scenario. Now let’s talk briefly about why winning these scenarios is bullshit.

: Actually, wait. Everybody roll a fortitude save.

: I rolled a 2. Does an 8 beat it?

: Unfortunately, no. You find your skin sprouting bright tropical flowers. It technically does stat damage, but that heals itself between scenarios so it’s not important.

: So it doesn’t matter at all? Why would they even put it in?

: Because getting it gives you an extra thing at the end. I’m not going to bother tracking it.

: Okay, NOW let’s talk about why these scenarios are bullshit.

: PFS has a system known as “Prestige Points”, which limits how much gold you can spend in a single transaction.

: There are two possible prestige points per scenario. The first is always given, the second is for doing optional objectives that there’s no way you could know exist.

: Technically, the party succeeds this time unless Mara fireballs the talking seed: they need to meet three conditions on that second list and they have.

: There are some scenarios, however, where the second point is BULLSHIT. I ran one once at a con where the players had to do something the scenario never even mentions.

: This is a marked improvement on the old way they handled this, which was that each character has a faction and the objectives were based on what faction you are (meaning it was possible to get impossible objectives) and you had to fuck your friends over to accomplish them.

: Finally, the chronicle sheet. This details what rewards you get. The top part is what we call “boons”, which usually open up new options.

: This one in particular is bullshit. PFS had this rule that you need physical copies (or signed PDFs that their website generated) for anything you want to use in game.

: This boon lets you pick the doll as a familiar (which is kind of fucked up, more on that in a minute).. if you have Bestiary 2. Bestiary 2 is a monster splatbook for GMs that used to cost $30 and is of zero use to players.

: Now, I will raise my hand and say that all of my books were completely legitimate and I would never think of pirating them at all. No sir. Not me.

: You can also buy shit off the chronicle sheet. Wizards can attempt to scribe spells into their spellbook for free, which is huge.

: Buying consumables was for the weak, which is why Dipshit McOracle did it all the time.

: I’ll close with why the familiar boon is kinda fucked up. Let me show you a picture of what the doll looks like.

: You can draw your own conclusions. Anyway, that’s it for this piece of shit. I’m not sure what I’ll do next.

: Wait a minute. What happens if you do the other stuff the note at the beginning mentions? Investigating the blacksmiths and the miller’s house?

: The first one is a complete waste of time. The second one.. you have a chance to see one of the mutant kids, but it’s pointless otherwise. That’s how you get the “ointment” to give to the venture captain.

: I could have spent all this time playing Dispatch.

: If it helps, the reason this scenario sucks is that it was rushed out for GenCon, a big gaming convention in Indiana that happens in August. GenCon is where Paizo launched each PFS season, and I think this one was rushed to be playable at GenCon.