Wayfinders in your pathfinder campaign!

[Xervish]

Howdy first time posting on the forums sort of been afraid of getting trolled but I have no one else to turn to. Anyways I was wondering if the community could help me with a dilemma involving Seekers of Secrets, which is part of the Pathfinder Chronicles.

I was wondering what Resonant Powers method people use? Method 1 seems to grant fairly good abilities/boosts for not that much of an investment, though I do realize that you can only have one of these resonant powers active at a time. A certain ioun stone will always result in a certain bonus.

On the flip side there's method 2. You can roll for a random effect that may give an amazing boost to the PCs or hinder them, and I've seen method 2 ruin the mood for that session.

"Oh you rolled a 97...

...Your 10,000g ioun stone is ruined"

This happened to a friend of mine so it wasnt a surprise he got his character killed and started a new one the next session.
We've also played with this ruleset, but then purchased multiple cheap ioun stones and tried to hit the lottery for overpowered abilities. Considering you can buy cracked ioun stones for 200g (and sell them back after for 100g if you dont get what you want) and just keep replacing the stone until you hit something decent on the chart seems easy to abuse to me.

So what method does the community use? Personally I find method 1 to be more stable and fun, but am I wrong? Should I go back to playing method 2 instead? I appreciate the time you took reading this and any advice given.

[Toadkiller Dog]

Method 1. Ioun Stones are waaaaay overpriced anyways.

[Emanonpf]

Method 3: Have a merchant do bluff checks to sell them useless fakes at 150g or so.

Method 4: Include a cursed stone or two in the bunch that seems appealing enough for them to take.

Method 5: "Due to increased demand and limited supply prices have gone up."

As a GM you do have to manage magic items carefully least the parties power sways to much one way or the other. In most cases if you tell a group prices have gone up they will wait till a new town. At which point maybe they have gained a level and it is all good to let them buy an item or two. If a merchant swindles them or sells them a cursed stone they will probably track him down and get at least some money back. Then they will be more careful in the future ;)

[Chris Kenney]

I would strongly recommend that if you do Method 2 that flawed stones never have resonance powers. That bumps the price to play power roulette up pretty considerably, as well as limits the number of plays the table gets in all but the biggest cities even by RAW.

[Cinder Spark]

all in all this is just a game so do whats fun and enjoy yourselves