So, we will no longer be getting those interesting notes from our faction leader at the start of each scenario?
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It sounds like there will be an obvious accomplishment you need to perform to get 1 Prestige Point, and one that involves some more thought.
I just hope the one that requires more thought isn’t too vague, or something briefly said in the VC’s report of your mission, and you need to catch it. I do my best to pay attention to the information given, but a lot of times I just can’t hear what the GM is saying depending on the noise level in the room. Cons are especially bad.
I hope there is a clear way for you to receive even the more challenging mission. I liked the handouts because it spelled out what you needed to do and you had it in front of you if you needed to refer to it. Not something you needed to make sure you took careful notes on or heard in the first place.
But we’ll just see how it plays out.
Edit: Wait, I just read in another thread that it’s supposed to be 1 prestige just for playing, and one for completion (of the scenario?).
That’s different than what I heard earlier. But I like this, if true.
I can’t unfortunately go look at the guide again as I am at work and can’t bring it up. I did look it over last night, but it was unclear to me. However, that was probably because it was late and I was tired.
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This was a decision made because with 8 factions and with the detail they are shooting for in the scenarios, adding the faction missions was often tedious and at times did not reflect the nature of the faction. Also, if you have done some of the faction missions from season 4, you may find yourself hating your faction leader and not wishing to deal with him/her anymore. Now they can make missions that have missions for specific factions by design, not by force.
Not sure if I like that either.
I can see that as something that could be missed often during scenarios. I’ve always liked it that your faction (prestige) missions were clearly laid out for you. This new way just sounds a bit too vague.
But will of course give it a try before I pass any sort of final judgment.
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I can see that as something that could be missed often during scenarios. I’ve always liked it that your faction (prestige) missions were clearly laid out for you. This new way just sounds a bit too vague.
I wish this was the case! There are plenty of faction missions, especially on seasons 0-2, that are crazy vague. Which lead to people that had a mission "find some documents that may serve as compromising evidence" start asking EVERY ROOM "are there any papers in here? are they evidence maybe?".
From the older podcast it was made pretty clear that these "extra missions" for the second prestige would be closely tied to the main mission, so if you are doing the mission "to the best of your ability" you will probably stumble upon them automatically.
An example given was "find the missing relic, then the extra mission may be that you found some description key to help translate said relic." (paraphrased)
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Good riddance to faction missions for everyone every time. They always caused turmoil at our locales. People would always ask for help, other people would say they're secret, people would yell at each other for revealing factions, arguments would come up from that.
Something cooperative that you do together is so much better than the faction missions. It represents a better unity between pathfinders rather than the constant opposing factions (and it makes more sense now with Shadow Lodge gone. :p).
I will never do the older ones "for flavor" as a GM unless a player asks for it, and I will never request it as a player.
I'm so glad for this change!
I wish this was the case! There are plenty of faction missions, especially on seasons 0-2, that are crazy vague. Which lead to people that had a mission "find some documents that may serve as compromising evidence" start asking EVERY ROOM "are there any papers in here? are they evidence maybe?".From the older podcast it was made pretty clear that these "extra missions" for the second prestige would be closely tied to the main mission, so if you are doing the mission "to the best of your ability" you will probably stumble upon them automatically.
An example given was "find the missing relic, then the extra mission may be that you found some description key to help translate said relic." (paraphrased)
Heh, I knew I should have been clearer on my indication of the faction missions being ‘clearly laid out’. I do agree with you that the missions can certainly be vague (on how they read). I know I’ve had to ask the GM a couple of times to clarify.
What I had meant by vague is missing that crucial piece of information from the VC or not making your Perception check during the mission and not ‘stumbling’ onto what you need to do for your (faction) mission during the scenario.
But I do hope you are right that the prestige missions are not too hidden and you will most likely stumble onto them during the mission for the scenario.
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One thing to realize is this:
The intention has always been that you only ever get 4 or 4.5 PP for every 3 scenarios you play. Common practice, is that this does not work this way. If you miss one or two PP ever 3 or 4 levels, then you are the exception to the rule that almost everyone gets almost all PP. Whether that is because the GM is too nice, or the rampant sharing of missions happens between players, or whatever… the fact is, people are getting way more than 4.5 per 3 scenarios on average.
So my interpretation of the podcast, is that you are supposed to miss that perception check or vague reference roughly 1/3rd of the time.
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I'd be lying if I said I wasn't upset about the removal of the faction's importance in Season 5. I'm also kind of upset that this is being done retroactively to seasons 0-4 (because I enjoy the faction missions all things considered).
That said, if they've lost their importance, I wish factions had just been done away with altogether.
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Seconding MisterSlanky - I enjoy the faction missions for the most part. We were told that they would still be available for Seasons 0-4. Making them "optional" pretty much takes that away, and leaves nothing in it's place as far as making getting prestige at all difficult.
- Awaiting the revised Guide -
I won't miss them. They did nothing to help the signal-to-noise ratio in the crowded stores I've mostly played in.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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That said, if they've lost their importance, I wish factions had just been done away with altogether.
They haven't lost all importance. If you notice something that would be valuable to your faction, and you snag it, but you miss the second half of the main mission, you still get 2 prestige. So basically, Factions now reward player cleverness.
But I do hope you are right that the prestige missions are not too hidden and you will most likely stumble onto them during the mission for the scenario.
As youall play scenarios with the new faction missions, please let us know how they go for you, so we can fine-tune the clues given in the adventure!
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Judy, what is the best way to send feed back so it
A: reaches the right person
B: doesn't spoiler the mission for others?And can you make sure that info is in the FAQ or some other prominent place?
In the GM discussion area, most scenarios have a discussion thread where spoilers are discussed, in order for GMs to read up on what they might have to deal with while prepping the adventure. Paizo staff are pretty good about monitoring the forums, so if you have a comment or complaint about something in a scenario, that's usually a good place to put it, and someone at Paizo will usually notice.
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It is completely and totally unclear at the moment how prestige is awarded for any season. If you think you know... chances are you're wrong. (At least that you know. The system you think is the system for awarding prestige might be the right one, but it's impossible to figure out what the system is from the Guide and message boards right now.)
We have to wait for the updated season 5 Guide, in hopes that they completely rewrite the sections about awarding of prestige so that we know how to do it for all seasons' scenarios. They are aware that there is much confusion about faction missions and the awarding of prestige, so there is hope that indeed it will be clarified and make sense when the new version comes out.
Until that, and barring a crystal-clear post from Moreland or Brock on the matter, any post describing how the system works is at this point just going to be speculation, and you should take what anybody says they've figured out the rules to be with a grain of salt.
Judy, what is the best way to send feed back so it
A: reaches the right person
B: doesn't spoiler the mission for others?And can you make sure that info is in the FAQ or some other prominent place?
In the GM discussion area, most scenarios have a discussion thread where spoilers are discussed, in order for GMs to read up on what they might have to deal with while prepping the adventure. Paizo staff are pretty good about monitoring the forums, so if you have a comment or complaint about something in a scenario, that's usually a good place to put it, and someone at Paizo will usually notice.
Yep, the GM forum and product pages are good places, and ones the Society folks monitor. To avoid spoilering other players, you can hide key information behind spoiler tags (see "How to format your text").
Owner - D20 Hobbies
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So my interpretation of the podcast, is that you are supposed to miss that perception check or vague reference roughly 1/3rd of the time.
Which is probably why there was rampant sharing of missions, because nothing makes a player feel horrible like missing his mission over rolling a 3 on his Disable Device check and missing by 5 points.
I'm a very big fan of the discontinuing of the missions, I hated the stress of missing the checks on them.
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So my interpretation of the podcast, is that you are supposed to miss that perception check or vague reference roughly 1/3rd of the time.Which is probably why there was rampant sharing of missions, because nothing makes a player feel horrible like missing his mission over rolling a 3 on his Disable Device check and missing by 5 points.
I'm a very big fan of the discontinuing of the missions, I hated the stress of missing the checks on them.
Accepting defeat at the fickle hand of the polyhedral gods is one thing, accepting it because "you can't roll that skill untrained" is another.
I can't make a sleight of hand check? I fill up a pony full of tastefully arranged fruit baskets and hand them out to random people as i go, including the one with the note I need to pass off.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Martinsville
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Funny Story...
I had my Tengu Monk drawing people in the party in one scenario. (He is an artist) He then passed the faction mission specific thingy (forgot what it actually was) under the picture to the particular person the faction was for.
One of the few times the craft (Art) skill was useful.
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Good riddance to faction missions for everyone every time. They always caused turmoil at our locales. People would always ask for help, other people would say they're secret, people would yell at each other for revealing factions, arguments would come up from that.
Something cooperative that you do together is so much better than the faction missions. It represents a better unity between pathfinders rather than the constant opposing factions (and it makes more sense now with Shadow Lodge gone. :p).
I will never do the older ones "for flavor" as a GM unless a player asks for it, and I will never request it as a player.
Couldn't have said it better myself, though I have to admit, doing a personal side mission was pretty fun while it lasted. Well, when the arguments didn't come up, at least!
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I'd rather have 2-3 memorable and challenging faction missions than 78 annoying and unrelated skill checks punctuated by faction leader prophecies, failing a mission because you don't have a roll of measuring tape in your inventory, players continually asking the GM if a teapot is there, or PCs threatening the main mission because they want their prestige MacGuffin.
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I love factions missions. I love when they get in the wa of missions. To me that is like almost nay missions based tv/movie/book/whatever. One person risking everything for their little side mission. To me thats when they team it out or leave him to his own devices.
I agree some of the missions are garbage. When your faction missions is to complete the mission fah. I would also like to see factions teaming up for them, but alas. It would be cool for zarta to say. Hey I know we hate those andorain scum but we could use them..., and the andorian saying somethign similar.
Poor writers make some missions feel forced, but many add lots of flavor to an adventure that is often missed because no one has that faction.
poor faction missions an improvement over living forgotten realms that will be lost.
Good riddance to faction missions for everyone every time.
I'm also glad to say goodbye to obligatory (and often perfunctory) faction missions.
I can't say I'm crazy about the idea of "secret" objectives, but at least there won't be ten of them eating up space in every scenario.
Gah another issue I had with poor writing. When the sheet you have says nothing about keeping it secret but the gm notes say it.
That's not what I meant when I said "secret objectives", although I don't like those either.
I mean, I'm not sure I like the new idea that one prestige point will be for an obvious mission and one prestige point will be for an unstated supplementary mission. I predict that there will be a lot of PCs tediously flailing around trying a whole bunch of different random things in order to make sure the party isn't missing out on that all-important second prestige point.
But I'm probably just being unnecessarily pessimistic.
Or another favouriteMission "Bring back a drawing of the cage used"
Me "No need. I'll bring back the whole actual cage. Its right here after all and I have a boat to put it on and everything"
GM "That doesn't work - need Knowledge: Engineering to sketch it or you fail"
I remember this mission! And I failed for exactly the same reason.
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For me, the RP disconnect was how the VO's who gave the missions ALWAYS seem to know what I was going to be doing or whom I would be speaking with. It was so meta! Evil! The fact that the majority of them boiled down to a mandatory skill checks (often with skills that few players took) didn't help. Sad to say, I won't miss them.
I remember this mission! And I failed for exactly the same reason.Mission "Bring back a drawing of the cage used"
Me "No need. I'll bring back the whole actual cage. Its right here after all and I have a boat to put it on and everything"
GM "That doesn't work - need Knowledge: Engineering to sketch it or you fail"
I remember trying that with a lot of faction missions. "Bring back a drawing of the wall? No thanks. I'm bringing back the whole wall!" Some GMs were less than amused... I've failed one because I couldn't bring back someone alive because they just wanted an organ that was freshly cut out and preserved. That was annoying. I really couldn't get it any more fresh...
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Part of me thinks that if the goal is for characters to have a certain amount of wealth and prestige by level, then we should dispense with scenario rewards (prestige and gold) altogether and just say:
- At the end of each session, your character gets additional goal equal to 400gp times his current level (or whatever the right formula would be to make things work out right)
- At the end of each session, your character gets 2/3 of a PP. You can't spend fractions
This would solve a lot of the angst. It would make WBL work out for all character, and would reduce the paperwork. It would directly solve the goal-- the primary goal, I believe-- of making it so that 6 characters of the level appropriate to the scenario who've never met before can sit down and have characters appropriate to that scenario.
The problem it would introduce is that some (probably more than admit it, even to themselves) players are motivated by rewards. If they don't even have the sense that they're getting rewarded by points (be it gold points or prestige points) for what they're doing in scenarios, they won't care about the scenarios as much. It "shouldn't" be this way, as we should all be motivated by having fun. But the popularity of "achievement awards" in video games (which are worth nothing) indicates that this does serve as a motivating factor. So, taking away the resources given to you (gold and prestige) at the end of the scenario having something to do with what you did during the scenario would be bad, in this sense.
Which means that I don't think I'd really propose what I'm proposing here, even though it would solve some problems.
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I preferred the mission where we had to capture or kill the high level wizard. We were warned that he might teleport away so we had dimensional anchor prepared from 3 different sources to stop him. The party entered a room with a bunch of bad guys in it with a mage in the back. Mage won iniative and teleported away before anyone else even had a turn. Sorry, you lose we were told.
Me: "I ask the NPC about my faction mission."
GM: "Oooh, sorry. Says here you were supposed to ask him in the hallway during lunch, but you waited until after dinner in the garden, so you fail."
Been thru this one as well. I just shook my head.