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The other night I ran a scenario where the first encounter after the briefing, is the players trying to use bluff/diplomacy/intimidate to gain entrance into an important building. The briefing even said "if necessary, you’ll have to resort to bribing your way through." The party failed every skill check and then looked around puzzled. I mentioned bribery and got the response, "did they give us money for bribes?" The scenario says they can retry with a different skill check, or with an additional bribe. But what if they're just not willing to spend their own gold and failed every social skill? Time is of the essence in this particular scenario, but it's not meant to start until after the next encounter. Since they weren't willing to bribe for the additional rolls, I penalized them 3 minutes on their time. They ended up doing fine in the end, but I wonder if I should have handled that differently.
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Pathfinders are expected to fulfill the mission with their own gold if necessary. They don't get weapons for free and are still expected to fight, they don't get potions for free and are still expected to heal themselves, they don't get money for bribing and are still expected to finish the mission even if they have to resort to pay bribes.
I'm with Andrew on this one - if a party refuses to acknowledge failure and take the bitter pill of paying the bribes, they will just fail the scenario.
Though I might tell them that before handing out the sheets so that they can rethink their approach. Maybe they are under the illusion that they are not as independant from the Society as they think and expect the Society to take care of everything except beating monsters.
Venture-Captain, Germany—Hamburg
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I have to agree with Andrew and Blackbot.
If they failed at the skill checks and are unwilling to pay the bribes, they can't get in and therefore can't complete their mission.
But I do agree that there should be a warning before handing out chronicles with 0 XP/PP/gold.
In general, knocking out a guard could be a possible way to get in, but in that particular scenario, I don't think that would be a good idea.
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Since they weren't willing to bribe for the additional rolls, I penalized them 3 minutes on their time. They ended up doing fine in the end, ...
This confuses me, I think you've skipped part of the explanation.
How did they end up getting in if they failed all their social skills and weren't willing to bribe?
I'm asking because it sounds like they either solved the issue, or you handwaved it with the 3 minutes (which doesn't make any sense).
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Hamburg
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I played it as the guard getting annoyed at them standing there staring at him for three minutes, so he sent them inside to get them out of his hair and make them someone else's problem.
Then a certain Ambassy should really check if their "guards" are actually trained for the job :P
But out-of-character, you were certainly being nice to the players. Since at that moment, you didn't know how to handle the situation, you made a good decision, though. The game has to go on somehow, after all.If next time they don't want to pay bribes, remember you always have the option of having the guards (or whatever will have to be bribed) send the characters away, thus making them fail their mission, which will probably result in more missed gold than the bribes would have cost.
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So should I just say "You've exhausted all options except for bribery"?
If they aren't trying to come up with other options, then yes. I mean if the players are just sitting there and not trying to be creative and getting petulant because they can't get inside... then you can blatantly tell them what the other option is.
Although as a GM I think you did fine with your improvisation to move things along. Our job as GM is to keep things moving. And you had a better read of your table than I could ever have based on a message board post. But yeah, sometimes you gotta let the players know that, "hey, this is the way to get this done, if you don't like it that's fine, but this is the solution."
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I think you could use the "get out of my hair" trick once, ever. Call it beginner's luck for these Pathfinders.
Creative solutions should be considered, and even though they technically didn't do anything, next time it won't be so simple.
Saying something like "you all get the feeling you got very, very lucky in this situation to have some fellow who didn't simply send you on your way" should give off that impression to anyone except the most spoiled players. Say it slowly to let it sink in that Desna must be watching them.
As a GM, it's fair to encourage players - especially newer players playing a tier 1-5 scenario - to use other creative solutions if they don't want to use a bribe. It's good to get them to think, and if they can find a way around the bribe, that kind of thing is going to help them in every future game they play.
However, if they've used up their beginner's luck, if they can't come up with a creative solution, don't be afraid to give them the path of bad consequences, even if that means mission failure. They can still walk away and somehow try and recover with an alternative creative solution, but that's generally less likely to happen.
At some point, the players have to play ball, even if it's not the way you (or they) first expect.