Pathfinder Society Scenario # 10-01: "Oathbreakers Die"

NO SPOILERS

I ran this at Subtier 1-2, using the four-player adjustment.  I thought it was a strong start to the season, as the scenario has an excellent mix of role-playing, investigation, and combat. Daggermark is a great setting for an adventure like this.  Oathbreakers Die is one of those rare scenarios with a complicated backstory that actually makes its way to the players and helps enrich their understanding of what's going on and why.  It is a scenario that's complex to prep and run for GMs, and one that falls on the longer side (duration-wise).  In other words, this isn't one I'd recommend anyone try to run cold or haphazardly, but it's definitely worth the investment of time and effort to do right.

SPOILERS

The premise behind Oathbreakers Die is that a secret cabal of former members of the Daggermark Assassins Guild have hatched a scheme to take over the country's military and become a force unto themselves.  But when a member of the Pathfinder Society in Daggermark learns of the plot, all of the Society's agents in the city are targeted for death.  The PCs have to try to protect the agents from assassination while simultaneously figuring out who is behind the plot so that the Society has a future in the city.

The scenario starts with one of my favourite briefings ever, as Venture-Captain Istivil Bosk dies mid-way through his explanation of the PCs' mission!  Bosk has been poisoned, and PCs who give him the antitoxin sitting on his desk will be shocked to learn that they've made things worse--the poison has an added ingredient (a new formula called arcane amplex) that interacts with antitoxin to create a thick foam that suffocates the victim's airways.  At the levels the PCs are at, the best they can do is delay Bosk's death for a couple of rounds, but his death is inevitable.

However, a search of Bosk's office (with a nice array of skill checks being useful and important for various aspects of the search) turns up the name of another Pathfinder who is in danger--a gnome named Timinic who has been mapping Daggermark's sewers.  Timinic has been placed in a hidden safe house, but PCs can head to where he often started his mapping expeditions (a tavern called the Dripping Wall Distillery) or follow up on other leads involving either the last man seen alive with Bosk (a dwarf named Brandur) or where the arcane amplex was invented (a local alchemist shop named Pemak's Tinctures).  This part of the scenario can proceed in any order.

From this point, the GM has to keep careful track of how much time is being taken by everything the PCs are doing.  The reason is that Bosk's assassin (a doppelganger) is at large and will be murdering a list of individuals based on a set timeline.  There's a handy graphic showing how long it will take the PCs to travel between each location in the scenario, as well as a stated shortcut for estimating how long conversations with various NPCs will take.  The fun part of all of this is that the PCs may be behind the assassin the whole time, may arrive at a location while he's in disguise and stalking a victim, or may arrive at a location first.  There's a lot of permutations on how/whether/if/where the assassin will be fought, making it a fun scenario to GM.  I kept the time-keeping stuff all "behind the screen" when I GM'd it, and just left it up to the players to realize that time was of the essence--it worked out quite organically that way.

The locations and NPCs that the Pathfinders will encounter during their investigation are all interesting and well-described.  One of the things I thought the writer did quite skilfully was to ensure that the PCs could still get the clues they needed to proceed even if they got to a location too late to save a particular NPC from being murdered (but that getting there sooner would make getting the information easier and result in more complete information).  It's a delicate balance that was pulled off beautifully here.  I think the only quibble I had with this part of the scenario is with the half-orc alchemist, Pemak (who originally invented the arcane amplex).  There's a sort of rules sub-system that GMs familiar with PFS scenarios will be familiar with: PCs' interaction with Pemak is gauged and tracked with "Approval Points," and one of the success conditions (as well as some in-scenario events) are dependent on how many Approval Points the PCs earn.  However, I didn't think this system was set up well in the scenario and it didn't run smoothly when I ran it;  the PCs were primarily concerned with quickly tracking down the assassin and their allies, and didn't naturally engage in the lengthy conversation on various topics that the Approval Points sub-system seem to envision here.  Tracking systems like these need to implemented organically and for goals that the PCs will be clearly motivated to achieve.

The final third of the scenario sees the PCs uncovering the identity of the cabal: a group called the Ghostknives, which is made up of rejects and dissidents from Daggermark's official Assassins Guild.  The Ghostknives are led by an alchemist named Cladara, and they've set up their headquarters (as thieves and assassins are wont to do) in the city's sewers.  The "Thieves Guild" flip-mat is put to excellent effect here.  The PCs' have to contend with a violet fungus (a plant creature capable of some nasty poison effects), several lesser assassins, and then Cladara herself.  The violet fungus was pretty easy to beat when using the four-player adjustment and the lesser assassins were the generic "rogues with sneak attack" variety, but the encounter with Cladara was pretty fun as her stinking cloud bomb made things tough for the PCs (until one got close enough to put her down with a single swing!).

I'm not sure a conventional dungeon crawl was the right way (thematically) to conclude a scenario that had so much interesting intrigue and detective-work in the first two-thirds, but I do understand the need to have a certain amount of combat in every adventure.

All in all, I really enjoyed Oathbreakers Die.  As I said in the "No Spoilers" section above, it's definitely much more of a challenge to prepare and run than some conventional "five rooms and five encounters in the museum" scenarios.  There's a lot of careful tracking and attention to detail that's necessary to make everything flow together smoothly.  Still, I admire the writing that went into it, and at this stage in PFS Organized Play, we should be able to handle complex scenarios.  It's one I'd happily run again just to see the different permutations of what could happen with different groups.