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

[Timrod]

Summary

: I remember a lot about when I ran this scenario. It’s 2016, and it was the last game I (or probably anyone else) ever played at the store.

: The store in question was called Friendly Fire, and was located in Mansfield near the University of Connecticut. It was (probably) doomed to failure because it wasn’t even big enough inside for a proper card game tournament.

: Most of these stores make their money on card games, and not having enough space for that is a death sentence.

: Unlike the last scenario, this one is for levels 3 to 7. This means I’ll need to level everyone up twice. I’m also going to partially respec Mara since his build kind of caps out at this point.

: For this one, you’re starting out in a smithy in.. I believe it’s Fantasy Ireland.

The incessant beat of hammer against anvils and weaponry greets entrants into Smine’s Weaponworks, a smithy of great repute in the town of Tymon in the River Kingdoms, along with an oppressive wave of heat and the acrid smell of coal. A broad-shouldered dwarf, face and arms smudged with soot from the furnaces, smiles broadly, proclaiming in a voice harsh with years of yelling: “Ah! I was expecting you lot! Step inside my office. I have refreshments.”

He steps inside a cozy office, gesturing at several chairs, ranging from an overstuffed chaise to a sparse and undecorated rocking chair. After rinsing his face off in a nearby basin of water, he pours out several glasses of water, immediately quaffing one for himself before refilling it and sitting down to his desk.

: Did he just offer us water from a barrel he’s been washing himself in?

: That’s a power move. “Here, bitch, have this water I’ve been dunking my balls in.” I should kill him.

: They have a picture of him in the book and he’s the most obvious alcoholic to ever exist. He looks like a dwarven version of the detective from Dagger of Amon Ra.

: “Venture-Captain Holgarin Smine, at your service. Guessing the Lodge got my message. You don’t look too fresh-faced for this mission.”

: “I’ll be quick about it. You’ve got a bit of travel ahead of you. One of the mayors of Uringen, Lady Aurelia Ogden, wants the Society’s help - with an experiment she’s been doing. The clock tower of Uringen has drawn all sorts of researchers.”

: “It hasn’t worked quite right from the get-go. It makes a whole piece of the town disappear. Four clock faces, each with a different way of counting time. All displaying a different time - until now. The mayor thinks those faces might finally join up.”

: “What’s going to happen once it does is anybody’s guess. She doesn’t have the staff she needs to record it properly - so that’s what you’ll be doing.”

: “You hear about the mishap with [PLOT DEVICE NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT]? The clock makes magic time juice that can fix it. The boat will get you there in a little over two weeks, and the clocks align in three weeks.”

: This scenario was supposed to tie into the meta-plot, which came in the form of these special scenarios that in practice only ever got run once at Gencon each year.

: I was there and do not remember what the meta-plot was. I think it was time travel. I have the scenario, I could look it up, but I won’t.

: I’m not going to post all of the questions like I did last time - just two.

What’s Uringen like?

: “Split. I mean that literally. One half of the town disappears for a bit, and the other sticks around. Aurelia Ogden is the mayor of the half that disappears sometimes. Knavar Mieren is the mayor of the other half. They’re pretty isolated in Uringen. To get there, you’ve got to get guides to help you through the Embeth Forest.”

Can’t we just teleport there?

: “No, because the forest constantly moves around.”

: It’s the Lost Woods?

: How are they getting supplies if they’re in the middle of a constantly shifting forest miles from civilization?

: This next part is one I wound up dropping when I actually ran this because the people who designed this scenario made some bold assumptions about party composition.

: You take a boat down the river, and it drops you off near the edge of the forest. There’s a camp just outside, with a dock that’s currently occupied by a barge dropping off crates.

: Once you step off the boat, a pair of guys in woodland outfits take you to the camp’s leader.

: “Well met, travelers. Smine sent word of your arrival, expressing the urgency of your journey. Unfortunately, we will have to delay your departure.”

: “On our trip here, we ran afoul of that blasted grig’s traps, and we won’t be able to leave until we’ve fixed things up.”

: What’s a grig?

: They’re a kind of fairy. Think a drider except instead of a spider on the bottom, it’s a cricket. That’s strange though, they’re usually good-aligned.

: At this point, 80% of parties are going to run into a roadblock. The scenario expects the players to clear traps, but no one in this party is capable of making those rolls.

: He tells you that you can help by looking for traps and disabling them, or by healing their horses that the fairies poisoned. Mara can also make a knowledge nature check.

: 28. Rolled an 11.

: You know that there are friendly fairies who can be placated with offerings of milk, honey, bread, and booze.

: Can I leave out some coke? I feel like they’d like coke.

: They don’t. You’d think they would, but for some reason drugs don’t do anything for them. I’ve seen them devour hallucinogenic mushrooms and not feel a thing.

: Also drugs aren’t legal in PFS because Paizo are dumb.

: I’ll roll some heal checks for the poison.

: My lowest roll is a 19. Does that work?

: You bet it does. You cure all of their horses.

: None of us can search for traps, and I don’t think I could disarm them even if we found any.

: We can just adapt. Astra, I think you have the highest perception. Can you give me three rolls?

: Let’s see.. the first one’s a 30, the second is a 31, and the third is a 22.

: You’ve spotted all of the traps, so at least you won’t get hit by them.

: What kind of traps are we talking here?

: Two of them are dart traps, which are essentially blowguns linked to a tripwire. The third is a falling log trap, which is a partially sawed tree hooked to a tripwire.

: Why is there even a roll to clear those? You shoot the tripwire or just follow it to the blowgun and smash the blowgun.

: Because Disable Device is a badly implemented skill. The simplest traps have a disarm DC of 20, and Disable Device is only a skill for like three classes.

: It doesn’t really matter that you don’t clear the traps, since you get the reward anyway - the foresters give you each a trained riding dog that none of you can use.

: Puppy! I’m going to name mine Valorpaw and if anything happens to him I’ll kill everyone and then myself.

: I’ll name mine Jonathan and I’m going to spend the rest of the adventure petting him.

: I don’t need a dog. I feel like it’d just get in the way or get hurt.

: I already have an elephant, what do I need a dog for?

: You also get a bag full of reports for the mayors. Let me read the description of the next area, because there’s a puzzle here no one gets.

The town of Uringen is a flurry of activity. Puffs of multicolored smoke rise from tall stone chimneys that emerge from steeply pitched rooftops, and people dressed sharply in black and white shuffle about the town, preparing for the convergence. The divide between the two halves of the town is stark. A wide street, 20 feet across at its widest, separates the static and unstuck portions of the town. Boarded windows and prominent “closed” signs decorate the static half of town, whose residents speak in hushed tones. In the unstuck half of town, excitement and curiosity outweigh fear, and groups of people gather in the streets. Above it all, a four-sided clock tower look out upon the town, with an enormous clock face decorating each side at its pinnacle.

: You see two people arguing in the middle of the road. One is a man, the other is a woman. There’s a tiny blue man with wings flying around their heads. You can make a knowledge local check -

: 20. I rolled a 3.

: You know that they’re the mayors of the two halves of town, and the blue guy is a pixie who kind of looks like John Lennon, which is how you know 70% of the player base for PFS was retirees.

: The male mayor doesn’t seem to like you much, but the woman is your contact - Aurelia Ogden.

: I’ll walk up and hand the mayor those reports.

: “Excellent to see that my message was received. I’m glad to see you made it here on time for the experiment.”

: “Your role is very straightforward. I need you to observe the westward-facing clock, and record everything you see or hear. We don’t expect the tower to do anything until around 11:45. I’ve purchased you a room at the inn in the center of town, the Oaken Knot.”

: “Feel free to look around. The tower is open, so long as you don’t touch anything.”

: I’m going to say that it’s kind of mission-critical that you investigate the tower.

: The tower has a puzzle in it that is.. I’d say there’s no way you could understand it without investigating the tower. The problem is that investigating it takes time and checks.

: It is possible to fail this scenario entirely because you either didn’t roll well on the traps in the forest or because you don’t roll well on the investigation part.

: Let’s investigate the tower then.

: The tower is made of white stone, and you can tell just looking at it that they built it like the pyramids, where the stone is held in place by gravity.

: Astra, roll perception.

: I rolled a 3. That’s a 20.

: Unfortunately, you fail. The DC is 25. However, I’ll give it to you anyway because the puzzle is impossible without it.

: You notice that all of the stonework has shapes carved into it, and this entire thing is a clusterfuck to explain so I made a visual aid.

: Each floor has a different shape carved in the stones. The ceilings have the symbol from the floor above, and the floors have the symbol from the floor below.

: The writer intended for the GM to use dice to explain this, which is why each floor has a dice symbol on it.

: Who thought this was a good idea?

: Just as you ask that, the fairy shows up and starts talking about how much he loves geometry. Make a knowledge (arcana) check.

: 31.

: This part is real dumb, but you notice that there are magical sigils on everything that somehow can’t be seen with a perception check. This stops you from losing gold at the end of the scenario.

: It punishes you for not having someone who can make an arcana check? What’s the DC?

: 30.

: Is that the secondary success condition?

: Oh no, that’s MUCH dumber.

: Now that you’ve seen the clock tower, you can go back to the inn because if you stay in the clock tower the scenario breaks. It is very well-written.

: What are all those circles?

: This is the fun part. They’re portals. Technically this is supposed to wait until midnight or whatever, but I think it makes sense to at least let you learn the mechanics.

: Does anyone have something to throw? I’d have my eidolon go in, but he takes damage if he gets too far from me.

: I know! I’ll take a pebble and cast Light on it to make it glow orange, so it’s easy to find. I’ll toss it through this one.

: You throw it through the portal. It goes through, and then appears right next to you.

: Hmm. Let me walk through the same one, just to see if I end up in the same place.

: Make a will save.

: I knew it. 17.

: You end up in an empty sheep pen north of the fountain, and notice that you’re moving faster than normal.

: Told you, teleportation sucks.

: What if I go back through the portal I’m standing on?

: That’s another will save.

: It’s no good.

: You wind up down here, only now you’re moving slower.

: I get it. The blue portals send you to a random red one and slow you down. The red ones send you to a random blue one and speed you up.

: Where’s the inn on this map?

: I believe it’s meant to be the big building with the sheep pen next to it.

: Astra, go through a blue portal. I want to test something.

: I rolled a 28 on my will save.

: You can pick which portal you come out of. It has to be red.

: I’ll come out of the red one near the fountain.

: I’m going to ask around for a ladder so we can get on the roof of the inn.

: Sounds like a trip to the hospital waiting to happen.

: Think about it. There’s only one way onto the roof, and that’s through a blue portal. When we get into the inevitable fight, they’ll have to go that way to get up there.

: And they’ll be slowed if they try it.

: You find a ladder fairly easily. Where are you going to attach it to?

: The back side, but I’m going to pull it up once everyone’s up there.

: The real game didn’t quite go like this. When I GMed it, the party barely made it past the traps in the forest because no one could disarm them.

: They got to the town late, didn’t have time to investigate the clock tower (I had to work that in between the fights there) and didn’t understand the puzzle - which is no surprise.

: I’m doing it this way in the LP because all the people who played PFS were obsessed with breaking it and I know this is what they would’ve done if they had the chance.

: So the funny thing is, the scenario doesn’t tell you how this combat is supposed to start. I think the idea is that the enemies were hiding the whole time, but for sake of argument I’m going to say they teleport in.

: You’re watching the clock tower, which is glowing and emitting sparks as it draws closer to midnight. Can you show me on the map where each of you is sitting?

: The four little bug-looking things are gremlins. The koroks are something else, and you can also see two tiny dragons around the fountain that look like they have depression.

: We’re going to gloss over this one mostly because it takes forever. I simulated the combat out until near the end and it was over ten pages long.

: Let me give you a couple of excerpts.

: Okay Shape, the bug thing fires two arrows at you. Does a 23 hit you?

: Yes.

: I don’t think a 19 does, so you take.. 1 damage.

: What’s it firing, toothpicks? I’ll fire two arrows right back at it.

: It dies.

: And let that be a lesson on proper archery techniques.

: And this one, when the depression dragons finally attack.

: Okay, uh.. it.. fuck, I can’t find a single angle it can hit you without your eidolon getting an attack of opportunity or Mara being able to fireball them both to death.

: It breathes depression at you. Make a will save.

: 19 for me, 23 for my eidolon.

: The breath does nothing.

: The gimmick to this fight is that the enemies can freely warp using the portals unless they roll a 1 on their save.

: Shortly afterward, Callie’s eidolon gets a crit on one dragon and Mara blinds the other with glitterdust.

: You find three potions of cure light wounds, two wands of scorching ray the depression dragons never got to use, and a scroll of dispel magic.

: Those wands are useless. I can’t hit with scorching ray because it needs dexterity, and the one person who could hit with it can’t use wands.

: This is the one thing 5E has over 3.5E for casters. In 3.5E, spells like Scorching Ray are useless because the roll to hit with them is based on dexterity.

: If this worked like 5E, Mara would use his intelligence modifier instead.

: All of you reach the clock tower. You notice that there’s a window open on the second floor, which is about 20 feet off the ground. The front doors are closed.

: I’ll open the front door.

: It’s been physically warped so that it won’t open. Anyone who wants to can make a strength check, otherwise you’ll need to either climb to the open window or make a DC 30 disable device check to open a window.

: Hoo boy, this part. I had to skip this when I GMed it because the party had no hope of making it inside. Let me tell you what the DCs are: the climb check is a DC 20 and the strength check is a DC 23.

: From the sign-in sheet, the party was a 5th level Hunter (a dex-based ranged class), a 4th-level Wizard (who can’t use Fly), a 3rd level Oracle (this was Dipshit McOracle’s character), and a 4th-level Bard.

: The casters couldn’t make the climb check, and the hunter couldn’t make the strength check even with buffs and people assisting him.

: In a big city PFS group, the GM would probably shuffle people around to make a more balanced party, but by the time I ran this we were struggling to fill one table a week.

: I got a 21 on the strength check.

: You don’t make it. The target number’s a 23.

: I’d need to roll an 18 to make that, and I’m supposed to be a strength character!

: My eidolon can assist. That adds 2, so he’s at a 23.

: As soon as you enter, you’re attacked by a uh.. magic burlap sack.. that starts spitting alchemical crap at you. It’s large and barely moving.

: This might be the one thing I can actually hit. I’m going to dual-wield the wands and fire two sets of scorching rays at it. Yes, I know you take a -10 or some shit to the second hit. No, I do not care.

: 13 on the first hit, 18 on the second.

: Both of those hit even with the absurd off-hand penalty and the fact that you can’t dual-wield wands. It takes 58 damage.

: I’ll follow up by running up to it and hitting it in the face and.. that’s a natural 20!

: I’m not even going to bother having you roll to confirm that because this thing’s armor class is lower than your total bonus to hit.

: 48 damage.

: It’s dead. Inside it are a bunch of longswords and clubs, four upgraded alchemist fires that do 1d6 instead of 1d4 damage, four acid flasks that do 1d6 instead of 1d4, an elixir that gives you a +10 to acrobatics and one that gives you one use of dragon breath.

: The animated bag is almost laughably non-threatening: it has an armor class of 13 at the high tier, has a -2 to initiative, and has a whopping +3 to hit on its four ranged attacks.

: Once you kill the bag, the pixie from earlier comes out and hands you a piece of paper.

: What the fuck does any of that mean?

: You find the words “alternate” and “progress in an orderly fashion” on the back.

: Oh, and the clock tower now has portals all over it. So here’s what I’d like to propose to the readers: can YOU solve this puzzle?

: For reference, the players aren’t supposed to be able to see the “S” marks, but since you obviously can’t spend hours figuring out which ones are the special portals, I’ll just show them.

: I’ll also explain that if you end up on the gears (say, by taking the blue portal on the 2nd floor) you need to make a DC 18 acrobatics check or take 3d6 fall damage, plus another d6 per floor if you fall from anywhere higher than the 2nd floor.

: I vote we burn the place down for the insurance money.

: Isn’t it made of stone?

: That’s never stopped me before.

: Hmm.. there’s no portal going up from the fourth floor. That would tell me that whatever we’re supposed to do, it has to end there.

: By the way, you get four attempts at the puzzle until the game fails you. What I find funny is that the puzzle is so obtuse that the scenario has to tell the GM how to solve it.

: There’s no blue portal on the first floor, so if we were going to alternate, we’d have to take the red portal on the first floor to start.

: What if we took the red portal on the first floor, took the blue portal on the second floor, and then walked up the stairs to the second floor and took the red portal?

: That would mean jumping on the gears. I don’t think Mara and I can make that.

: What if we sent your eidolon? Can’t he fly?

: He can, but I need to stay within 100 feet of him. I can’t imagine there’s a 100-foot drop between floors.. so as long as he doesn’t fall from the top we should be fine.

: Let’s draw this out. I’ll stand here, and my eidolon will fly into the red portal.

: Once he comes out, he steps back into the blue portal and goes down to the first floor. He walks back up the stairs to the second floor, and goes into the red portal this time.

: And then we do the same thing on the third floor, except I’ll move my character so that she’s not out of range. Is that the idea?

: That has to be it, right? We’re alternating and doing a two steps forward, one step back pattern.

: That’s not it, even though it meets all the criteria. What you’re supposed to do..

: It’s the hash marks on the sheet.

: It makes no sense, but the only other way it could work is if you started on the second floor, jumped into the blue portal, and then jumped into the red portal on the first floor.

: Then you climb to the third floor, take the blue portal, and then take the red portal on the second floor.

: How did you figure that out?

: Easily. I thought to myself “If I was a smug prick puzzle designer, what would I do?” and once I knew your answer was wrong, there’s only one other way it could work.

: It makes no sense that they wouldn’t accept both solutions. You’re repeating numbers either way.

: At the real table, the players had no fucking clue how to solve it so I just gave it to them. There is a hint system, but it’s of dubious quality. The clues are:

1. “One portal of each color on each floor changes floors, except on the first and fourth floors. The writing on the back says ‘Alternate’ and ‘Progress’ in Sylvan.”

: We already knew that!

2. “Alternating must mean we need to switch off between red and blue portals.”

: Did they think we don’t know what the word “alternate” means?

3. “Progress probably means we have to go through the floor switching portals in some order, but I’m not sure which order. The symbols by the arrows and inside each floor on the diagram show which portals go to which floors.”

: We did that, though!

: Finally, if the players don’t get it and the game is going to go over 4 hours, it gives you this hint but also takes away the extra gold and items from impressing the stupid fairy.

4. “I’m beginning to think we need to ascend in order based on the number of vertical lines, starting by taking the blue portal on the second floor. But there’s no time; the portals are fading. Come on, I know you can do this!”

: But that doesn’t make sense! You wind up repeating floors, not doing them in order!

: The rest of this scenario is pure combat, so I’m going to skip all of it. The second prestige point comes from killing a group of gremlins on the third floor in under 4 turns.

: The remaining fights are a dryad who can potentially be negotiated with, and another group of evil fairies virtually identical to the first fight in the town.

: Negotiating with the dryad gets you a useless item, and going through a portal gets anyone who did so (which I think was everyone) the ability to cast Haste or Slow once.

: I’m buying so much alchemical pet shampoo for Valorpaw.

: I don’t know if I’m going to do another one of these, but if I do, I’ll probably do The Waking Rune. It’s one of the most notorious high-level scenarios in PFS.