Future of Pathfinder Society Update

I'd agree that for FIRST level characters, stop and starting with an adventure in between is okay as the character's are freely rebuildable. Once the character hits second level though things have to be capped off.

Let's NOT repeat that headache from PFS1, please.

1-2 okay It could happen that people play enough repeatable stuff to level up a couple of times over a weekend convention filling in empty time space but after that cap it off.

Or in other words, let's not chase away folks who may have been focused and leveled up quickly because they're dedicated and they've 'outleveled' the 'starter content'.

A more robust starting series of scenarios/quests should be able to address both power concerns as well as levels. If memory serves, the only reason the 1-5 Quest repeatables weren't available at higher levels was because of the restriction of L1. If there is greater risk for higher level characters, then I personally don't see the harm in letting folks repeat at higher levels (in the starting example of this post, L2 in a 1-2).

Absolutely love slow track. But I think generally speaking that with consumables, it ends up costing your characters a lot more cash.

It would be great if there were a champions mode that was like slow track but jiggered gold/rewards a bit.

I like the 1 xp per ar system, but I would like to suggest that experience required be varied by character class.

Wizard, arcanist 5 xp per level.
Paladins, druids 4 xp per level
Most other classes.. 3 xp per level. This would help balance the game, additionally.

I like the 1 xp per ar system, but I would like to suggest that experience required be varied by character class.

While it's definitely an "old school" option that would differentiate characters, it's would also be really hard to implement. In addition to the bookkeeping requirements it would be problematic in the beginning of the campaign when the "slow" classes wouldn't be able to participate in the first releases of higher level adventures simply because they hadn't gotten enough XP. Because there wasn't enough available.

Wizard, arcanist 5 xp per level.

Paladins, druids 4 xp per level
Most other classes.. 3 xp per level. This would help balance the game, additionally.

I don't know if that would actually "balance." And I'm going to leave it at "I don't know." Any other response would turn this into a martial vs. caster thread. Among many other reasons not to start that fight, we don't even have final rules to make any kind of comparisons.

In addition, the math goes all kinds of out the window if folks multiclass.

Absolutely love slow track. But I think generally speaking that with consumables, it ends up costing your characters a lot more cash.

It would be great if there were a champions mode that was like slow track but jiggered gold/rewards a bit.

I like the 1 xp per ar system, but I would like to suggest that experience required be varied by character class.

Wizard, arcanist 5 xp per level.
Paladins, druids 4 xp per level
Most other classes.. 3 xp per level. This would help balance the game, additionally.

I think that will run against a lot of different problems:

* Joe and Bob started playing Society tggether, but Joe's Fighter is leveling up faster than Bob's Wizard. Now they can't play together anymore because they're not close enough in level.

* So what if leveling wizards up goes slower than fighters. If a level 5 wizard is really more powerful than a level 5 fighter, then it's still not balanced for them to play in the same scenario. So what does slower advancement really solve?

* What if wizards aren't actually stronger than fighters? Maybe the newest book makes fighters a lot more powerful but wizard stayed the same. Should fighters now need more XP than rogues to level up? What about people who already had fighters? Do they go down a level? What if they didn't use anything from the new book?

* What is you multiclass? What if you have only a few levels in a fast-leveling class? What if you have only a few levels in a slow-leveling class?

The bigger problem is WBL:

I know a LOT of players who would gladly play additonal scenarios per level to gain more gold.

there are plenty of bad ideas and once codified as processes/rules they are hard to change.
PF2 is supposed to be simpler and more streamlined than PF1.
Organized Play is a PR effort and has to balance ease of play and fun with RAW.

Perfect Tommy wrote:

Absolutely love slow track. But I think generally speaking that with consumables, it ends up costing your characters a lot more cash.

It would be great if there were a champions mode that was like slow track but jiggered gold/rewards a bit.

I like the 1 xp per ar system, but I would like to suggest that experience required be varied by character class.

Wizard, arcanist 5 xp per level.
Paladins, druids 4 xp per level
Most other classes.. 3 xp per level. This would help balance the game, additionally.

I think that will run against a lot of different problems:

* Joe and Bob started playing Society tggether, but Joe's Fighter is leveling up faster than Bob's Wizard. Now they can't play together anymore because they're not close enough in level.

* So what if leveling wizards up goes slower than fighters. If a level 5 wizard is really more powerful than a level 5 fighter, then it's still not balanced for them to play in the same scenario. So what does slower advancement really solve?

* What if wizards aren't actually stronger than fighters? Maybe the newest book makes fighters a lot more powerful but wizard stayed the same. Should fighters now need more XP than rogues to level up? What about people who already had fighters? Do they go down a level? What if they didn't use anything from the new book?

* What is you multiclass? What if you have only a few levels in a fast-leveling class? What if you have only a few levels in a slow-leveling class?

I seem to remember another second edition of something or other that did something similar... hmmm... I wonder what it could have been...

Seriously, though--this has been tried before and maybe there's an interesting take on it somewhere that works? I don't know that I've seen it, though. You have traditionally ended up with balance issues similar to what Lau points out, and it assumes that the designers (and the organized play administrators) understand with near-perfect certainty the actual balance between characters. Furthermore with Paizo's reluctance to rerelease old PDFs of scenarios with new info, you're looking at some added difficulty if the balance ever changes. Like how, if you try to fix WBL by scaling it by class, things are going to get weird once that balance changes.

"Wizards are way better than druids now, but they were absolutely terrible in season 2 so make sure you go play a whole bunch of season 2!"

Perfect Tommy wrote:

Absolutely love slow track. But I think generally speaking that with consumables, it ends up costing your characters a lot more cash.

It would be great if there were a champions mode that was like slow track but jiggered gold/rewards a bit.

I like the 1 xp per ar system, but I would like to suggest that experience required be varied by character class.

Wizard, arcanist 5 xp per level.
Paladins, druids 4 xp per level
Most other classes.. 3 xp per level. This would help balance the game, additionally.

I think that will run against a lot of different problems:

* Joe and Bob started playing Society tggether, but Joe's Fighter is leveling up faster than Bob's Wizard. Now they can't play together anymore because they're not close enough in level.

* So what if leveling wizards up goes slower than fighters. If a level 5 wizard is really more powerful than a level 5 fighter, then it's still not balanced for them to play in the same scenario. So what does slower advancement really solve?

* What if wizards aren't actually stronger than fighters? Maybe the newest book makes fighters a lot more powerful but wizard stayed the same. Should fighters now need more XP than rogues to level up? What about people who already had fighters? Do they go down a level? What if they didn't use anything from the new book?

* What is you multiclass? What if you have only a few levels in a fast-leveling class? What if you have only a few levels in a slow-leveling class?

This really doesn't seem that hard.

Honestly, I'd love to vary it by level, first level mages being vastly less out of balance than 5th level mages, but ..

As for the rest of it.. if wizards aren't more powerful how does that change the equation. Some classes are more powerful some aren't. Either way, this would let you be more granular.

As for billy and bob not being able to play together - that would require a conscioius effort on their part, wouldn't it....

I’m pretty sure Paizo is hoping they’ve evened out the classes so there’s not a power disparity anymore. It’s unlikely to be the reality, but skewing level gains by class seems like admitting to not being able to balance the classes.

I have been doing SFS since release date. The method that SFS uses seems to be perfect. 4 level range with 3 different rewards given on money, low, out of subtier and high. Subtier is determined by APL and if lands on a .5 then the players determine high or low.

Very little math on money, and it is straight forward on the sub-tier.

Just my 2 cents worth.

I agree with Lau

Someone having a first name that is the same as my last name can be a bit confusing at times :).