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But it does bring up a good point. Why not equate a gp value to PA and allow, under very specific guidelines, the player to combine PA and gold to pay for a raise? maybe i have ~3000gp, and 9 PA. Neither would be enough for a raise. But if PA had a cash value, maybe I could combine them to get raised.
That would save other players from having to dip into their resources to pool a raise and negatively impact their progression.
I could see a case for pooling PA to get a raise dead, from other characters in the same faction. "We all petition Your Excellency to pull whatever strings you need to, in order to bring our colleague back from the grave."
Yep, I could definitely see this as part of the PA changes and expansion of spending options that are coming with Season Three.
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That would save other players from having to dip into their resources to pool a raise and negatively impact their progression.Right, cause you wouldn't want death to be a setback. :P
And why should I have to suffer a setback because I had to play with Player Y's lame character at a Con?
Bob was trying to come up with a way to allow a single character to be able to handle the entire setback, using a mixture of gold and prestige.
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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Ok, I noticed something in the OP guide and thought this was as good as any place to ask. They is there a listing for using PA for True Resurrection? At 77 pa, from my calculations, there is no way for anyone to be able to purchase this. The max you can get is 2 pa per scenario, that would mean you have to successfully gain max PA in 38.5 scenarios, and as we all know, the max number of scenarios is 37 before retirement. So, what's the point of the 77 PA needed for TR if we can't pool pa?
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Because you chose to join an organized campaign? Playing with random strangers (and their random characters) is a fundamental component to Pathfinder Society.
I'm okay with it, but was just looking at some of the situations I have recently seen. A PC dies and no one at the table has enough coin to get the raise. But the player has a lot of cPA (just not enough for the raise). To avoid the player getting frustrated, why not allow for the partial cash payment and using your reputation with the society to fund the remainder?
With regards to curative magic (death, ability drain, etc) it should be relatively easy to quantify the cash value of a PA. To some extent it has already been done with the 1PA=150gp or 2PA=750gp item purchasing rules. Why not extrapolate that to raise dead?
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You could also go with something a little more out of the box if we wanted to "make it easier" to survive a PC death.
Something like Raise Dead costs 3 times your level in PA up to 18 maximum or 5450 gp.
The hardest part of this entire situation is the level 3-5 characters who don't have enough PA or gold for a Raise Dead. Someone at level 5 has invested up to 60 hours of time at the table, only to see it possibly be gone for good.
This said, I still stand by my original statement:
"Death should be balanced. It needs to be a large enough setback that people think in character and try to avoid it. It needs a small enough setback so that when it happens the player isn't discouraged from pushing forth."
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I like the current balance. Plus I'm not sure if a PA-to-gold option would increase or decrease the likelihood of being able to get a Raise Dead. More than a few people would fall to the temptation of spending that gold. Unless PA could only be converted to gold for Raise Dead reasons, which I don't find appealing.
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Because you chose to join an organized campaign? Playing with random strangers (and their random characters) is a fundamental component to Pathfinder Society.I'm okay with it, but was just looking at some of the situations I have recently seen. A PC dies and no one at the table has enough coin to get the raise. But the player has a lot of cPA (just not enough for the raise). To avoid the player getting frustrated, why not allow for the partial cash payment and using your reputation with the society to fund the remainder?
With regards to curative magic (death, ability drain, etc) it should be relatively easy to quantify the cash value of a PA. To some extent it has already been done with the 1PA=150gp or 2PA=750gp item purchasing rules. Why not extrapolate that to raise dead?
I think this would be a good idea for just such a situation. I know the maths could be complicated, but the GM/player could grab a calculator. However many points you spend earns you 375 (or whatever) off the cost of the Raise. So someone with 10 CPA (or PP with the new naming conventions) would save 3750 and spend only 1700--likely about the amount received for one character from their most recent scenario (if the scenario was successful, of course).
I agree with Kyle's sentiment that death should still have a sting, but spending every last point of prestige you've saved up (and additionally a bunch of cash) still has a pretty big sting (if nothing else, it ups the stakes because you lost the safety net and so if you die within the next few scenarios, you won't have the prestige to spend and it will be final).
That said, I am in favor of minimizing the situations where people who invested into PFS enough to have a level 4 or 5 character lose everything. In my home games, I'm a lot meaner about death penalties and raising because the worst that happens is that the player makes a new character of appropriate level. Here they can't do that.
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I like Bob's idea of paying for Raise Dead with PA, but being able to "top up" the amount of PA with gold if you don't have 16 PA.
It's kind of like topping up your Airmiles with cash if you don't have enough.
The downside is that it does add (slightly) more complexity to the system. The upside is it allows PCs out of a jam if they don't have enough PA or gold alone to get it done.
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I like Bob's idea of paying for Raise Dead with PA, but being able to "top up" the amount of PA with gold if you don't have 16 PA.
It's kind of like topping up your Airmiles with cash if you don't have enough.
The downside is that it does add (slightly) more complexity to the system. The upside is it allows PCs out of a jam if they don't have enough PA or gold alone to get it done.
THIS!
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You could also go with something a little more out of the box if we wanted to "make it easier" to survive a PC death.
Something like Raise Dead costs 3 times your level in PA up to 18 maximum or 5450 gp.
The hardest part of this entire situation is the level 3-5 characters who don't have enough PA or gold for a Raise Dead. Someone at level 5 has invested up to 60 hours of time at the table, only to see it possibly be gone for good.
And CR+3 final encounters (with 7th-level boss) at Tier 3-4 are the prime-time for getting killed as a PC.
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I think this would be a good idea for just such a situation. I know the maths could be complicated, but the GM/player could grab a calculator. However many points you spend earns you 375 (or whatever) off the cost of the Raise. So someone with 10 CPA (or PP with the new naming conventions) would save 3750 and spend only 1700--likely about the amount received for one character from their most recent scenario (if the scenario was successful, of course).
Though, would Pooling the PA and gold just be for resurrection of a your poor character who was stepped on by the giant ant eater, Or should it also be available to pay for that last 50-500gp for an item that you are looking at.
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I think this would be a good idea for just such a situation. I know the maths could be complicated, but the GM/player could grab a calculator. However many points you spend earns you 375 (or whatever) off the cost of the Raise. So someone with 10 CPA (or PP with the new naming conventions) would save 3750 and spend only 1700--likely about the amount received for one character from their most recent scenario (if the scenario was successful, of course).Though, would Pooling the PA and gold just be for resurrection of a your poor character who was stepped on by the giant ant eater, Or should it also be available to pay for that last 50-500gp for an item that you are looking at.
I vote no, never, never ever. Maybe for a res, but I think requiring characters to outfit themselves is a very good idea. It keeps all of the characters on as even a playing field as is possible given the variables of a game as complex as Pathfinder.
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Though, would Pooling the PA and gold just be for resurrection of a your poor character who was stepped on by the giant ant eater, Or should it also be available to pay for that last 50-500gp for an item that you are looking at.
Primarily for Raise Dead, but could be used for any of the paid spellcasting services.
Definitely not for item purchase. The idea is to allow for the individual affected by a condition to be able to recover without impacting (or depending on) the wealth of the other players.
Sure, as Kyle stated, it is a cooperative game, but I have seen occasions, especially at conventions, where players do not want to spend their wealth to raise another player's PC. I cannot blame them for that decision, but since it happens more often than not, I do not think it is fair to the player when s/he does not get the support of the other players.
The intent of this concept is not to make death (or other conditions) any less meaningful. Just a way for a player to pool their wealth with their fame (PA) to get the required services.
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Though, would Pooling the PA and gold just be for resurrection of a your poor character who was stepped on by the giant ant eater, Or should it also be available to pay for that last 50-500gp for an item that you are looking at.Primarily for Raise Dead, but could be used for any of the paid spellcasting services.
Definitely not for item purchase. The idea is to allow for the individual affected by a condition to be able to recover without impacting (or depending on) the wealth of the other players.
Sure, as Kyle stated, it is a cooperative game, but I have seen occasions, especially at conventions, where players do not want to spend their wealth to raise another player's PC. I cannot blame them for that decision, but since it happens more often than not, I do not think it is fair to the player when s/he does not get the support of the other players.
The intent of this concept is not to make death (or other conditions) any less meaningful. Just a way for a player to pool their wealth with their fame (PA) to get the required services.
+1 to the above.
It would make death at lower levels not as soul crushing as it is now w/o making it consequence free. I saw someone die at level 2-ish while at their first convention and they were ready to quit because they spent the entire 1st half of the con leveling that character and they felt like they wasted those 12+ hours. If people could pool PA(which they are much more agreeable to doing since its harder to spend it otherwise) it would help things alot.
Raise dead turns PFS into a computer game and encourages the 'charge at anything' mentality as there are no real consequences for failure. If you can ask other characters to share the costs by contributing PA or gold then why not act like an idiot, die horribly and put the burden on everyone else? I might be persuaded to contribute the cash or PA from a session if a character died through no fault of their own, but I don't want anyone demanding I do it, and I would only contribute the points from that session.
I'd prefer it if we removed raise dead completely, which should force characters to stop and think for a moment. It also raises the tension, encourages sensible tactics and discourages playing up at every opportunity. Put a genuine fear of the unknown into players. If you die, start again at 1st or DM for a while to get some credit. I know it's possible to just be unlucky, so put more points into Con next time and don't play up. My 9th level wizard died, but she made a tactical error and was caught out in the open, whilst playing up and having a base Con of 10. RIP.
Of course with tiers and massive differences in power between levels it can cause issues when play opportunities are limited, but part of the point of organised play is the ability to get a game no matter what level you are. Starting again at 1st shouldn't be that difficult. I take a different view of things in a home game where starting at 1st isn't viable due to level differences, but this is PFS.
Having said that, whilst Raise Dead remains in the game allowing a character to pool his PA and gold because he doesn't have enough of either sounds like a sensible idea.
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Raise dead turns PFS into a computer game and encourages the 'charge at anything' mentality as there are no real consequences for failure. If you can ask other characters to share the costs by contributing PA or gold then why not act like an idiot, die horribly and put the burden on everyone else? I might be persuaded to contribute the cash or PA from a session if a character died through no fault of their own, but I don't want anyone demanding I do it, and I would only contribute the points from that session.
While I haven't seen this show up too prominantly in PFS, it showed up all the time in the LFR where the death penalty was negligible.
A penalty for death has to fit what Kyle Baird stated above:
"Death should be balanced. It needs to be a large enough setback that people think in character and try to avoid it. It needs a small enough setback so that when it happens the player isn't discouraged from pushing forth."
Dying sucks. But to claim that when you die at level 2 is just 'wasting the last 12 hours of play' just shows me that the player is focusing on the wrong thing. Advancement is awesome. But what about the 12 hours of fun RPG you just got in? Is it somehow retroactively worthless because your character died? You HAD fun. Death happens. If you let a death ruin hours of fun you had in a system, the problem is NOT with the system.
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Raise dead turns PFS into a computer game and encourages the 'charge at anything' mentality as there are no real consequences for failure.
I'd prefer it if we removed raise dead completely, which should force characters to stop and think for a moment.
I've seen 6 characters die so far, and not one time was it because one of them was "being an idiot", or "not thinking enough".
No consequences for failure? 5 out of 6 characters permanently died (1 was rezzed). I'd say that's a consequence. Raise Dead is fairly expensive, especially at low levels, and low levels are probably the time you're going to die. Raise Dead is relatively less expensive at high levels, but I think that's a perk from surviving so long. If you don't think 5000g is a significant enough consequence, maybe you should offer to spend the money the next time someone at your table dies?
Raise dead turns PFS into a computer game and encourages the 'charge at anything' mentality as there are no real consequences for failure.I'd prefer it if we removed raise dead completely, which should force characters to stop and think for a moment.I've seen 6 characters die so far, and not one time was it because one of them was "being an idiot", or "not thinking enough".
No consequences for failure? 5 out of 6 characters permanently died (1 was rezzed). I'd say that's a consequence. Raise Dead is fairly expensive, especially at low levels, and low levels are probably the time you're going to die. Raise Dead is relatively less expensive at high levels, but I think that's a perk from surviving so long. If you don't think 5000g is a significant enough consequence, maybe you should offer to spend the money the next time someone at your table dies?
It's a temporary inconvenience as you'll be earning that every mod at later levels. It's not a great deal different to playing down for a few mods either. Gold per level varies quite a lot, depending on who you play with and where. If you're such a low level that 5k is huge, then why rez the character?
I've already stated I'd consider contributing if it wasn't the character's fault. I don't force people to play up; in fact I'm quite happy to play in tier. I've only lost one character, and it was my own stupid fault. I also retired another character (6th level) that should have died except the DM soft-balled us tactically (it wasn't the only reason for retirement, but it was nagging away at the back of my mind). The most characters I've seen die are in Diablo 2; I lose some money that I'd probably have lost gambling anyway and then carry on like nothing happened, until after a while I think "what's the point?"
I am assuming the GM is being fair though, and the rules and tactics listed in the mod are being followed. If you're on the wrong end of a GM with an attitude problem then that's different, but I've never met one of those.