Venture-Lieutenant, Washington—Pullman
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1st Sadly you would find groups of people GMing for each other always awarding 1.5xp, not everyone would do it, but some would.
2nd See above.
3rd The GM is allowed to give conditional modifiers, I know that when someone says something ingenious or in just the right way I throw modifiers on their roll. People are not supposed to always succeed their faction missions, if they made it so that everyone succeeded all the time, there would be no point in having them. Some faction missions are harder than others and some can't be completed without violating oaths or your characters morals.
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Lets keep exp equal. I don't want to see that being changed around, I like the simple math.
Extra stuff you do during/after the scenario? That is what your day job is.
Faction missions aren't meant to be completed every time. The characters that do tend to complete them have a range of skills, as befitting a pathfinder society explorer. I see a lot of characters who do nothing but combat, and then wonder why they fail their faction missions. And if GMs are given the ability to alter Faction Missions, then GMs get grief from players if they aren't given their PA. Lets not do that.
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1) No, that would be a nightmare for so many reasons.
2) No, that would also be a nightmare for so many reasons.
3) There is already flexibility in the solution you come up with. GMs are supposed to allow creative solutions to have a chance. Also, you can always ask other party members for help.
My (9th level) fighter has maximum fame, and it's definitely not because he's skilled, it's because I ask for help. And every table has been really good about it.
Truly lazy players will miss gold and don't get full prestige. That's what lazy players get, and it sounds like you guys are getting it, so I'm not sure what you're saying. Your groups are already being punished.
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Frankly, a lot of what you're suggesting is putting a lot of the "awards" for play (XP, GP, Prestige) into the realm of "judgment call" on the part of the GM. That works just fine for home play, but PFS requires a greater degree of structure, and, yes, it takes a lot of that judgment out of the individual GM's hands, for the sake of delivering a more consistent game experience for players. It's the nature of the beast.
but I understood that it was already within a GM's abilities to award less than maximum gold, yet every game I've played so far has always gotten full gold. I guess I'm saying that it should be harder to get full gold.
Yes, it's "within the GM's ability", but it's really based on "did the party complete / defeat / accomplish all of the encounters". If you complete an encounter (or succeed in avoiding an encounter due to roleplay, skill use, smart play, etc.), you get the gold associated with that encounter. So, while the GM can award less than "full gold", it's not intended to be a judgment call for the GM.
Gold in PFS is pretty closely tracked to the intended "wealth by level" progression in the Pathfinder core rules. Tinkering with one half of the equation (making it less likely that you get full gold) would require also tinkering with the other half of the equation (tinkering with the amount of gold available in adventures) in order to keep WBL at the right amount.
And as for the XP tracking issue, isn't it the GM's job to submit the scenario record including all players and results? So shouldn't it be easy to see in the odd case where a group of 6 guys keeps taking turns GMing and awarding 1.5XP?
If it is possible, it also requires a lot of analysis and sleuthing by whoever's charged with going through said records (probably Mike Brock). IMO, I'd rather have Mike spending his time on other issues. And, there's no ironclad requirement that sessions must be reported, and reported accurately. There's nothing preventing that theoretical group of 6 guys from simply not recording their sessions at all, or recording "normal" XP awards. It's highly unlikely that any "PFS Cop" will ever check the records against their Chronicle stacks.
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And as for the XP tracking issue, isn't it the GM's job to submit the scenario record including all players and results? So shouldn't it be easy to see in the odd case where a group of 6 guys keeps taking turns GMing and awarding 1.5XP?If it is possible, it also requires a lot of analysis and sleuthing by whoever's charged with going through said records (probably Mike Brock). IMO, I'd rather have Mike spending his time on other issues. And, there's no ironclad requirement that sessions must be reported, and reported accurately. There's nothing...
The problem really isn't a group of 6 people consciously cheating. Its already pretty trivial to cheat if you want to.
The problem is more that a group of players will unconsciously fall into a pattern. The new GMs will learn from the existing GMs and people will have a strong tendency to do what their local culture does. The result is that some groups would tend to get more exp and more gold than others because of this "groupthink".
If you read the boards for any length of time its pretty obvious that different areas have significantly different "cultures" in terms of how easy or difficult games are, how rigorously rules are enforced, what is counted as creative, etc etc etc.
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Yes, it's pretty easy to get max gold if you do all of the encounters. This is what helps keep PC parity.
This isn't Greyhawk, so the idea isn't to waste (game) time literally looting everything or picking everyone's pockets. I personally find that boring, annoying, and a waste of my game time. Even the Greyhawk campaign had a way of abbreviating that gameplay, "I Greyhawk the room". That kind of gameplay is better in a campaign, if that's how the GM wants to run it.
Yes, we get 1 XP per session, which also helps keep PC parity.
Missions probably vary mostly because of plot reasons. Some missions are going to be harder because they need a rare skill. Oh well. Creative solutions still apply, to give you a chance.
Not sure you can do much about lazy players in terms of roleplay, except not play with them. Everything else, it's just a difference in game styles.
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I find this thread funny. I figured most players expect to get -5450 gp, 0 (or -16) PP, and 0 XP* at my table. :-)
*Funny story here. I've handed out 0 XP three times total so far. The most recent was at Dragon*Con where one of the players showed me a chronicle for the character that he was playing. It was one that I had signed earlier in that adventurers life... for 0 XP. He was laughing (thankfully). Those are the only two times I've GM'd for him and 2/3 times I've ever handed out 0 xp. Unreal.
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Baltic
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I find this thread funny. I figured most players expect to get -5450 gp, 0 (or -16) PP, and 0 XP* at my table. :-)
*Funny story here. I've handed out 0 XP three times total so far. The most recent was at Dragon*Con where one of the players showed me a chronicle for the character that he was playing. It was one that I had signed earlier in that adventurers life... for 0 XP. He was laughing (thankfully). Those are the only two times I've GM'd for him and 2/3 times I've ever handed out 0 xp. Unreal.
A Chronicle with 0XP is like a battlescar. Wear it proudly!
Venture-Agent, Colorado—Colorado Springs
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RE: Awarding xp for RP. I love role-playing, and love playing with other players who RP, and I'm ecstatic when the GM RPs too. But not everybody enjoys this. Some people just want to roll dice and treat PFS as a really complicated board game or a really simple tactical wargame, and they have just as much fun playing this way as I do role-playing. I see no reason to punish those players for not wanting to do what I love doing.
The same goes for looting the bodies. That's just another form of RP. The only reason (officially) you would receive less than full gold for a scenario is if the PCs for whatever reason failed an encounter. What counts as failure may vary from scenario to scenario and even from group to group, but no group, and definitely no individual player, should be penalized just because they didn't want to spend the time to itemize the loot, body by body, during a session which has a limit on the time available to complete.
RE: Faction missions. Meh. Earning PP is just fluff. You don't need it, and should you never earn a single point, you lose little if anything. If you find that you rarely have the ability to complete your faction's goals, feel free to invest a little bit in improving the abilities needed to succeed more often, change to a faction more in line with your character's abilities, or just deal with what you have and try to find more creative solutions.
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Getting Max Gold for the adventure assumes that the party is squeezing every last gold piece out of the adventure. This includes searching everything (and finding it all), divesting every adversary of every last possession, completing every task set before them for a reward.
Frankly if your group is not doing this, they should not be getting max gold.
If you are talking about a Rogue picking pockets, burgling a business or residence, coning a mark out of their gold ... then that is what your Day Job is for. Provided there is time you could ask your GM to roleplay the Day Job a bit more, though the result is still fully dependent on your roll.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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At the same time, though, making characters pay full price for magic items already severely limits the power of the PCs.
Um, the game is designed around paying full price. The point of crafting is to have MORE wealth than normal, not to reach parity. There's even a FAQ about that.