I'm about to start GMing a Shattered Star campaign, and I noticed the rule that characters may not pool their Prestige Points.
Now, I understand why this rule exists in PFS organized play, to facilitate players' porting their heroes around to different PFS modules. But I'm not sure why it would exist in a campaign where I consistently have the same players.
I'm not sure how to give an in-game reason why the Society would keep a separate "account" for every individual. I can understand why, for game balance purposes: for example, the no-pooling rule would mean that the party wouldn't have access to Raise Dead until about 8th level. But if the purpose is to tell a character "you're too small-fry for the Society to pool such massive resources for you," I might as well just use the Fame mechanic and say "you must have X fame before you can access this boon." So that way, the players can still pool their Prestige Points when they need to raise a character from the dead, but only after that character has done a good deal for the Society (like, say, help gather 3 Shards for the Society).
(And as an aside: I want to reward out Fame in smaller chunks than the AP suggests for concrete things the players accomplish, to give a sense of gradual progress. Getting shards, of course, rewards more Fame than anything else.)
How have other groups handled the Prestige Points mechanic?