Rules Suggestion: Prestige Awards and ½ XP Advancement


Pathfinder Society

Grand Lodge

I just stared playing pathfinder with my friends and we failed on the second mission to a Twigjack. I was disappointed to find out that we could never make up the lost prestige even by going with the slower advancement track. Now our characters will always be behind people who have succeeded in all the prestige awards.

My suggestion to address this issue would be to change the rules on page 24 of the Pathfinder Society handbook from “To maintain balance, between characters on both advancement tracks, those PC’s utilizing the slow advancement track may only earn 1 PP per scenario” to “Characters can only ever earn total prestige up to 6 times their character level”.

If this change was made, characters that did fail to get all the prestige from an adventure could choose to take the slow advancement track to try and catch up with their peers. With this proposed change players would be more inclined to take the ½ XP if they did not get all the prestige points for an adventure. Currently there is no real reason to take the ½ XP advancement. This change would also help assure that all the players at the table were closer to the same power level.

This proposed change would still leave a penalty for failure but allow the PCs to work off this penalty by giving up the opportunity to advance to the next level quicker.

4/5 5/5 Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Tampere

You do realize characters are meant to average 4 PP per level, right?

Silver Crusade 2/5

My personal reason for going on the slow advancement track, and I consider this reason very real, was to play my character longer.

Breathes deeply.

First, you cannot mix slow and normal advancement in a level.

Second, you are not expected to gain all of the prestige points available. There are times you won't succeed, and the system is designed for you to get about 3/4 of the prestige.

Third, full level modules (those that award three experience points), also give just four prestige points to balance out with scenarios.

Liberty's Edge 2/5

The extra prestige is not an every time thing. It is there for going above and beyond the scenario. Almost every person has missed a prestige or two, it happens.

Sorry you missed a PP so early on in character advancement but once you get to level 7ish it will be a drop in the ocean. By the time you would be able to use PP for a raise dead, it would be cheaper to simply buy it.

There are several boons in PFS that give additional PP or up your PP and they afforded to very difficult encounters and adventures. Doing this would cheapen them and their significance.

4/5 5/5 **

Losing a point here or there will have a pretty negligible effect by the time you're a few levels in. It certainly doesn't affect "power level."

Slow progression is very useful for those of us who already have some maxed-level characters and want to play some of our favorite characters more often in the mid-level "sweet spot" and stretch out their careers a bit. I have three slow progression characters right now!

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5 RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8

I would personally like to see modules changed to 4.5 prestige (which is 75% of the 6 prestige you could gain in a level) instead of 4 prestige. As it stands PCs who play multiple modules get less than the expected prestige due rounding that 0.5 off. Fractional prestige shouldn't be an issue, as a character on slow progression can easily only earn 0.5 prestige in a scenario (fail the secondary success condition and earn only 1 prestige divided by 2 = 0.5).

5/5

Michael Eshleman wrote:
I would personally like to see modules changed to 4.5 prestige (which is 75% of the 6 prestige you could gain in a level) instead of 4 prestige. As it stands PCs who play multiple modules get less than the expected prestige due rounding that 0.5 off. Fractional prestige shouldn't be an issue, as a character on slow progression can easily only earn 0.5 prestige in a scenario (fail the secondary success condition and earn only 1 prestige divided by 2 = 0.5).

Right...nm...pointed out spaced mind issue by Majuba...thank you :)

5/5

Timorin: I have characters that started with a 0 PP chronicle - it's not a big deal at all, usually. I've seen players 1 or 2 short of being able to get raised, and I've seen retired characters who've never used their prestige. You won't be 'behind' anybody in particular.

Grand Lodge

I did not realize that 4 PP per level was the average instead of 6pp. Also I did not notice in the rules that you had to do advancement for a whole level. Thanks for pointing out that rule.

I could certainly see playing for 1/2 XP so you could play a character you enjoy longer.

Also I can see your point as you get more gold at higher level prestige points become less important. However, at 1st level 750 gold makes a big difference.

I was unaware that some boons and difficult encounter give additional PP. Making this type of change would indeed cheapen the significance of boons that give additional PP.

My suggestion was from a new player prospective. Oops you failed your first mission so now you dont have a cure light wound wand for the second. Then finding out that you can never make up the PP that you lost due to the first failure. So you will forever be behind other characters that did succeed. This type of scenario can really frustrate and turn off new players.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post.

Silver Crusade 2/5

There are some specifically introductory scenarios, such as First Steps part 1, and The Confirmation. See if you can get those run at your venue. They might get you a good feel for how it fits together.

The Exchange 4/5 5/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Yeah, those of us who have been on the boards for a while have read the posts from campaign leadership (and could probably dig them up if we tried hard enough).

Every couple of months there is an outcry from a new player about how it's "not fair!" that a GM didn't give them a full 2 Fame and Prestige on a scenario. Or that a module only provides 4 PP but gives 3 XP. It's just that s/he doesn't know about the 4 PP per level expectation. Timorin - yours is one of the most thought out, least overwrought posts I've seen on the subject. I applaud your civility and research.

My suggestion to add that expectation to the Guide. Probably right where you suggested on page 24.

Quote:
A player character advancing along the standard advancement track may earn both Prestige Points in a scenario, for a total maximum of 6 PP per character level. To maintain balance between characters on both advancement tracks, those PCs utilizing the slow advancement track may only earn a maximum of 1 PP per scenario. The Society expects that you will earn an average of 4 PP per character level, though outstanding Pathfinders may be successful enough to earn more.

Grand Lodge

Yes, I can see how many new players post "it’s not fair". The new players who do take the time to come and post might just give pathfinder society another try. However, many players who fail early probably just never give pathfinder society another chance.

If a new first level player failed and gets 0 gold and 0 PP for and adventure the 1st level player is around 1200 gold behind other players. As a result, more likely to fail on the next mission so why bother.

Maybe just like first level player can change their character before leveling up to second a rule should exist to allow 1st level characters to not take any awards/losses for an adventure. This way a 1st level character would have the option to make up a loss or suck it up and keep the xp.

Also I don’t know if it common for pathfinder society adventures but the encounters required to succeed in the “Tide of Twilight” adventure seemed virtually impossible to complete for four 1st level characters. I can post the details but a monster the can do 4d6 points of damage per round in an large area is a death sentence for four 1st level characters.

Grand Lodge 5/5

I could be reading what you are suggesting incorrectly, but are you aware that you earn half fame/prestige for slow tracking as well as half exp and gold?

So regular track means it takes you 3xp to level, which means you cant earn more than 6PP per level, since you can get no more than 2 per scenario. Slow track means you get half for all those scenarios, so you need to play 6 scenarios to gain a level, and will only earn a max of 6PP over those scenarios, since you can only earn 1 per scenario.

Like I said, though, I could be mistaken in what I thought you were saying.

Dark Archive 2/5

Timorin, it is impossible in a PFS scenario to get 1 XP, 0 gold and 0 PP. To get 1 XP, you have to had to gone through 3 encounters. Just by going through those encounters, the player will receive gold. The average gold a for a tier 1-2 scenario is around 500 gp. I don't know where you are getting 1200 gp.

If the player some how gets 0 XP, 0 gp, and 0 PP, that means either the player left early or the character died in the first combat. Either case, he PC isn't behind anybody since he would play his next game like a brand new PC.


Nebten wrote:

Timorin, it is impossible in a PFS scenario to get 1 XP, 0 gold and 0 PP. To get 1 XP, you have to had to gone through 3 encounters. Just by going through those encounters, the player will receive gold. The average gold a for a tier 1-2 scenario is around 500 gp. I don't know where you are getting 1200 gp.

If the player some how gets 0 XP, 0 gp, and 0 PP, that means either the player left early or the character died in the first combat. Either case, he PC isn't behind anybody since he would play his next game like a brand new PC.

^ This

Also, Alot of 1-5 scenarios are really deadly for level 1 PC's due to one lucky hit taking you out. If you can, try and get in with a level 2 PC. Letting other people at the table know you are level 1 helps. PFS is friendly community and people will try and help you through your first level.

Another point, Until level 2 you can retrain your character. Toughness as level 1 feat or playing Barbarian for the first 3 scenarios helps. After make the character into what you want.


I imagine his 1200gp figure takes into account the 750gp usage of 2pp. It really should not be problematic to play any appropriate levelled scenario for a new PC, so one who has missed out on a bit of gold on a PP should have no trouble either. Also remember that a Wand of Cure light wounds is really a party item, if your PC is in a group with others who have one they will use it on you.

5/5

Seth Gipson wrote:
I could be reading what you are suggesting incorrectly, but are you aware that you earn half fame/prestige for slow tracking as well as half exp and gold?

He is aware, he was suggesting an alternative to allow slow progression to catch up on prestige lost.

Nebten wrote:
Timorin, it is impossible in a PFS scenario to get 1 XP, 0 gold and 0 PP. To get 1 XP, you have to had to gone through 3 encounters. Just by going through those encounters, the player will receive gold.

It would be unusual, but not impossible. Not every encounter provides gold, and not every encounter is completed successfully. It would be rare though to get the XP and no gold. Although I can think of a scenario where it happened, or close to it.

5/5 5/55/55/5

I forget, can you earn half prestige points or not?

Grand Lodge 5/5

Yep.

Grand Lodge 5/5

At first, when slow advancement came out, it was all or nothing. You had to succeed at both Faction missions in order to get the 1 Prestige Point for slow advancement. This was done to avoid any x.5 values for Fame and Prestige.

But it was very unfair for those only succeeding on one Faction mission since they would get 0 PP on that Chronicle.

The Guide was changed to allow earning .5 PP on slow advancement to correct this undeserved "penalty".

4/5

Majuba wrote:
Seth Gipson wrote:
I could be reading what you are suggesting incorrectly, but are you aware that you earn half fame/prestige for slow tracking as well as half exp and gold?

He is aware, he was suggesting an alternative to allow slow progression to catch up on prestige lost.

Nebten wrote:
Timorin, it is impossible in a PFS scenario to get 1 XP, 0 gold and 0 PP. To get 1 XP, you have to had to gone through 3 encounters. Just by going through those encounters, the player will receive gold.
It would be unusual, but not impossible. Not every encounter provides gold, and not every encounter is completed successfully. It would be rare though to get the XP and no gold. Although I can think of a scenario where it happened, or close to it.

Majuba is spot on, as I just left MEGACON this past weekend and recieved a chronicle with 1XP, 0 Gold and 0 Prestige so it does happen, very rarely, but it does happen(I think the is the 3rd time for me in 15 characters.)

Grand Lodge

Thanks for all your comments

Starting with the toughness feat, playing all Barbarians, and switching characters/feats before 2nd level are great ideas. However, I am not sure we want to do that level of metagaming just to make it to second level.

I agree it is not impossible because it happened to us on our second adventure. The adventure had this fairly cool curse that we had fun role-playing. However, if you failed to complete the adventure you had to pay to get the curse removed or retire your character. So I should have stated we got zero net gold.

I convinced my friend to try pathfinder society again. Hopefully we will have a second level character at the table. If we get hit for another save and die blast that takes us all out my friends are done.


Timorin wrote:
I agree it is not impossible because it happened to us on our second adventure. The adventure had this fairly cool curse that we had fun role-playing. However, if you failed to complete the adventure you had to pay to get the curse removed or retire your character. So I should have stated we got zero net gold.

This happen to one of my level one characters. Didnt reduce his gold to 0 but it was alot of gold lost. One thing you will realize as you get characters higher is that the 500 gold from a level 1 scenario is nothing. It becomes irrelevant. Raise dead cost 5,450 and Restorations cost 1280.

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