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I am having more issues with delayed credit because as much as you would like to ignore it, I STILL see plenty of new players that cannot seem to grok how to hold credit when playing pregens and/or GMing (especially because they work different mechanically).That could be changed. I imagine that if playing up, playing a pregen, and taking GM credit all worked the same way, it'd be a lot easier.
Id be 100% behind this, even if unrelated to the wealth issue. I still don't know why pregens hold the sheet until the level of the pregen instead the subtier played. Meh.
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My suggestion is similar to one already provided. Make the adventures levels 2, 5, 8, 11 and people can play the adventure if they are one level off. This means one set of monsters/traps no varying dcs. Plus 12th level characters would have more to choose from.Chris I like this idea!
Tiers would be:
1-3
4-6
7-9
10-12basing the GP off of levels
2
5
8
11Sounds good to me.
To be honest this is a monster thread and many people have put out some great things. Lets just say this happens - that fixes the issues being brought up during Season 5 and on.
What would be the option for Seasons 0-4?
Fixing the past is much harder than trying to fix the future.
My first thought would to be leave them as they are, sooner than later people will have played them out and have moved on.
Second thought would be to just average the gold between the tiers. Granted players will get more gold at the bottom half but if they spend unwisely they will probably regret it. Yes they may have the money to cooler stuff earlier, but will they have necessary FAME?
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Here's my 2 cp. ...
I live in an area where it's more of a challenge to make legal tables. We've managed to organize a game day every two weeks and usually run two tables. Generally one tier 1-4 table of five or six players and one higher table of four or five players. It is generally the case that the upper table has two payers in the upper subtier and two in the lower. Two people generally have to play up or down.
As I understand the system as presented in the podcast, if you play up you still only get the gold in your subtier, but you face the dangers and costs of the upper tier. If you play down, you still just get the gold for the lower subtier. This really appears to leads to one of two outcomes. 1) the table doesn't go off because the lower PCs will not play up, or 2) the higher PCs must play down. There is no benefit and a huge penalty for playing up. So it will generally make it harder to form legal tables. I don't like that. (period).
I don't want to travel an hour to a game that doesn't go off because of these limitation. That's time and money down the drain and more problems for something I'm suppose to be enjoying and promoting.
My suggestion. If you're playing up, you get at least gold halfway between the lower tier gold and the tier you played at. Why not all the upper tier gold? Well, you most likely needed a little extra help from the higher level PCs just to survive. This solution provides a reasonable incentive for playing up vs. the risk and limits the damage to the WBL scale.
-Swiftbrook
Just My Thoughts
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Personally l am against the delayed record. Let's say that my character in record short of 5th level and I go to two cons and play up for 9 adventures. Now are going to tell me I can't play that character because he already has enough records to bump him to the next tier?
Or my only choice is to be penalized and have to take the lower reward even though I was the person who made the table along with 3 seventh level characters? Also people have been saying as partial compensation that I can replace my consumables with the money that I am losing? Before I do that, could someone tell me how I recharge my wand? Or do I get to replace the entire wand every time I play up? And that is just the starting point. This will (not could) go very quickly into okay, let's use the low level guy's wands, potions and blanches because he will get to replace them with his over cap.
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Personally l am against the delayed record. Let's say that my character in record short of 5th level and I go to two cons and play up for 9 adventures. Now are going to tell me I can't play that character because he already has enough records to bump him to the next tier?
Or my only choice is to be penalized and have to take the lower reward even though I was the person who made the table along with 3 seventh level characters? Also people have been saying as partial compensation that I can replace my consumables with the money that I am losing? Before I do that, could someone tell me how I recharge my wand? Or do I get to replace the entire wand every time I play up? And that is just the starting point. This will (not could) go very quickly into okay, let's use the low level guy's wands, potions and blanches because he will get to replace them with his over cap.
If you have to play up for 9 adventures in a row then there are other issues at work that no solution is going to address.
Edit: additionally, if you play up for 9 adventures in a row currently (nearly a third of your career), you will shatter the WBL for your character level which is exactly what the developers are trying to avoid. Playing up from level 5 you would probably have well around 10-20K more gold than you should at that point.
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If you have to play up for 9 adventures in a row then there are other issues at work that no solution is going to address.
All you have to do is miss one session with group of friends that all started characters at the same time. Or be taking that last chair at the only available table. I have played more than one con with the same person that I have never met before at every table who was 2 levels behind. While 9 may be unlikely, it is not impossible especially when you have limited play options.
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Edit: additionally, if you play up for 9 adventures in a row currently (nearly a third of your career), you will shatter the WBL for your character level which is exactly what the developers are trying to avoid. Playing up from level 5 you would probably have well around 10-20K more gold than you should at that point.
1) fame still limits what you can buy
2) Without holding records you would only be playing up for 1 or 4 games (depending on your viewpoint for 5th)3) yes you could start holding from your first level 3 game and get a ridiculous number held. My main question is how does anyone plan to deal with the person who does hold to many? Because a new player could go back and play 1-7s along with current tiers and end up with to many records by miscounting.
4) there is no great solution, because some group is going to disagree and with any game more complicated than tic-tac-toe several people will figure out how to game the system
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Ok, done driving and caught up on the messages. After thinking everything over, all of the proposed systems have some problems, but I think something in there is workable. Here's my thoughts and my current preferred order.
1. 2XP 1/2XP - If some way can be found to fix the benefit of playing down (reduced fame is a possibility), I think this system addresses more of the issues than the others, while also adding something new and interesting in a way for characters that are behind in XP to catch up. I understand concerns about characters power leveling, but really, do I care if the person next to me took 12 games to get to level five or only 6 games? No, and why would I? Also, as I mentioned earlier, this brings it more in line with a conventional XP system where fighting tougher encounters grants more XP and fighting easier scenarios grants less XP, which I kind of like.
2. Out-of-tier - The reason I like this less is that it still means someone could play up a lot and gain a WBL advantage. It just reduces the amount of increased gold they get. And, if I'm remembering the current proposal right, playing down would actually net you more gold in the scenario than someone playing in-tier for that scenario? That doesn't seem right. I think maybe a more simplified playing up version might be better. If you play up, you get the Halfsies increased gold. If you fall between tiers, you get the tier you played, and if you play down, you get the tier you played.
3. Delayed Chronicle - Upon reflection, and thanks to some very good points made by everyone, I'm not as into this idea anymore. It's simple and fits with the pre-gen held chronicles, and that's the best thing it has going for it. It does not offer someone who plays down an opportunity to make up that wealth, and from what I'm reading that's a major concern for a good number of people. I do still prefer this to the podcast version, though, because this at least offers some potential for extra money to be available in the event a character playing up is killed. Consumables are a legitimate concern that seems to be getting more complicated as the discussion continues.
4. Changing how scenarios are tiered to work more like modules - This is an interesting idea, but I would guess unlikely to be able to be implemented for season 5, since scenarios are already being written based on the existing tiers and scenario ranges. Also, I do think limiting a scenario to apply to only 3 levels would create issues seating tables sometimes, which is really my main concern. I think the major considerations of an event should be making sure that whenever possible, people who show up are able to play, and that they able to have fun doing it.
5. Equalized wealth by character level - I haven't seen this one mentioned in a while, so maybe it's lost support. I'd almost prefer the podcast version to this, I think, as rewarding the same wealth to a character regardless of tier played just seems to have the worst of all of the options in every regard except standardizing wealth. Low level plays up? No extra gold to offset risks. High level plays down? Still gets the same rewards while having lower risks.
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Here's to hoping the devs are working on a different solution that will blow us all away. There doesn't seem to be one best answer so it's either gonna come down to a combination of ideas or they are just going to have to make some people unhappy that don't like the change they chose. Hope we get some sort of acknowledgement in the next few days that lets us know which ideas are plausible and which ones are off the table.
Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Martinsville
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Ok... I will once again propose my "Halvies" plan, which will use this statement in the Society Guide around the point where it talks about playing up or down.
"Players that play up or down will be rewarded gold based on the gold reward of the character's original tier, with the following adjustments. Characters playing up will get the full amount of their own tier's gold plus half of that again. Players playing down will get half of their own tier's gold plus half of the lower tier's gold that they are playing down to. Those characters whose level falls between the tiers will be considered a part of the lower tier."
This is basically "mid tier" gold. It is simple math, even if the DM rewards less than max gold. Playing up/down gold can be predone on future Chronicles Sheets, and it doesn't mess with EXP or Fame.
My belief is that the "IOU" system, basically treating a character like a pregen, or the +2 or +1/2 exp mold is getting way over complicated for a simple reward system.
I would rather have the mid tier gold that would still be around what a character should get in his career rather than getting short changed or have no incentive to play up other than "everyone else is better than you."
Anyone tell me what is wrong with this proposal?
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As I understand the system as presented in the podcast, if you play up you still only get the gold in your subtier, but you face the dangers and costs of the upper tier. If you play down, you still just get the gold for the lower subtier. This really appears to leads to one of two outcomes. 1) the table doesn't go off because the lower PCs will not play up, or 2) the higher PCs must play down. There is no benefit and a huge penalty for playing up. So it will generally make it harder to form legal tables. I don't like that. (period).
I don't want to travel an hour to a game that doesn't go off because of these limitation. That's time and money down the drain and more problems for something I'm suppose to be enjoying and promoting.
Preventing or mitigating this kind of thing needs to be a primary concern of whatever revised rules we wind up with. Both the podcast rule and the hold and apply rule are inadequate in this regard.
Keeping the flexibility to balance playing up or down without a permanent hit to your character is necessary to help PFS grow into places where it is hard to get even one table running, especially at high tiers. The leadership has done a magnificent job making sure that PFS has relevance beyond big cons and places where there are already plenty of players, so don't screw it up now with unnecessary restrictions.
First off I question how big a problem people playing up is that it requires such a drastic solution, but aside from that, the only solution that will avoid negative conscienceless bigger than any problems it averts is the x2 or x1/2 XP proposal which unfortunately might not be getting the consideration it deserves from the PTB.
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Am I right in assuming that nobody really likes dump stats, they're cheesy?
How about changing the 20 point build rules to allow NO credit for a stat below 10 AND increasing the starting wealth to compensate for it. One of the main reasons for dumping a stat is to get enough somewhere else to keep your first level character alive. (The other IMHO is to cheese stats to minimax)
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Am I right in assuming that nobody really likes dump stats, they're cheesy?
How about changing the 20 point build rules to allow NO credit for a stat below 10 AND increasing the starting wealth to compensate for it. One of the main reasons for dumping a stat is to get enough somewhere else to keep your first level character alive. (The other IMHO is to cheese stats to minimax)
I happen to really like dump stats. While I do use them to build effective and optimized characters based on good and bad stats for the role and class I wish to portray, I also use them to influence my character's personality. The current character I'm working on is going to be rocking a shocking 5 in Wisdom, and I will be embracing some derro-level insanity.
Starting wealth is perfectly fine, and ends up negligible after a few scenarios: 150 gp is a drop in the bucket when you compare it with the expected WBL of a third level character (3000 gp).
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Dont know if it has been already suggested but would giving those who play down the option of taking the slow rewards for their tier or normal awards for the tier they played be a step up from the current model?
Not sure the Jam tomorrow delayed credit option works I have a 1st level character and play three scenarios with 3 friends with level 5s I delay credit for each and then They are level 6 and I am still level 1. (OK unlikely example to prove a point but something similair will happen with delayed credit system)
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor
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My suggestion for players playing down is to give them the option to play for 0/0/0. They would get any boons and access to any items on the chronicle, but they would get no experience, no gold, and no prestige.
(let me re-iterate the word "Option")
This way players who do wind up playing down don't fall behind on the wealth curve. Essentially they are just playing for whatever boons might be on the chronicle.
Its unlikely consumables will be a big issue because they are playing a lower tier scenario.
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My suggestion for players playing down is to give them the option to play for 0/0/0. They would get any boons and access to any items on the chronicle, but they would get no experience, no gold, and no prestige.
(let me re-iterate the word "Option")
This way players who do wind up playing down don't fall behind on the wealth curve. Essentially they are just playing for whatever boons might be on the chronicle.
Its unlikely consumables will be a big issue because they are playing a lower tier scenario.
Save that then we open up a can of worms that people will burn through scenarios whenever they are playing down and they will clamor for replay options even more so than they do now.
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If the issue is that people need more challenge so they play up, why not include in games a Extra Challenge Box. There is a scaling element already. So add an inverse scaling.
Then a table that is unanimous in playing High Challenge can do so - and earn the gold for their level. And leave everyone else where the tiers say the challenge should be.
People won't need to play up, because they are seeking challenge.
And gold can remain where it is.
The play down problem seems to be a much more difficult question - and I like the average method that gives people playing down a little more gold (call it a training fee) than their pathfinder brethern but presumably they more than pulled their weight.
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i still like lifetime wealth counts that can shift characters up an equivalent level (or even better lifetime wealth minus condition cures, so costs for getting raised or cured are subtracted from it) and in theory there could be an under-level as well, if the condition subtraction is used.
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Save that then we open up a can of worms that people will burn through scenarios whenever they are playing down and they will clamor for replay options even more so than they do now.My suggestion for players playing down is to give them the option to play for 0/0/0. They would get any boons and access to any items on the chronicle, but they would get no experience, no gold, and no prestige.
(let me re-iterate the word "Option")
This way players who do wind up playing down don't fall behind on the wealth curve. Essentially they are just playing for whatever boons might be on the chronicle.
Its unlikely consumables will be a big issue because they are playing a lower tier scenario.
well...if your okay with 0/0/0, you already CAN reply scenarios all you want currently. Your allowed to play anything you played before for no credit...so have at it.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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well...if your okay with 0/0/0, you already CAN reply scenarios all you want currently. Your allowed to play anything you played before for no credit...so have at it.Save that then we open up a can of worms that people will burn through scenarios whenever they are playing down and they will clamor for replay options even more so than they do now.My suggestion for players playing down is to give them the option to play for 0/0/0. They would get any boons and access to any items on the chronicle, but they would get no experience, no gold, and no prestige.
(let me re-iterate the word "Option")
This way players who do wind up playing down don't fall behind on the wealth curve. Essentially they are just playing for whatever boons might be on the chronicle.
Its unlikely consumables will be a big issue because they are playing a lower tier scenario.
Except credit might be necessary for a legal table. I also don't think Mike wants a bunch of noneeported no-credit plays.
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I've read through many of these posts but not all.
How about first limiting the games to a 5 level range.
Each session would have gold for EACH level 1 to 5.
Limit players to playing up or down to no more than two levels.
If you play down you get the lower gold. If you play up you get 1/2 the extra gold.
So if your playing a 3rd level character, your GM looks at the loot for level three at the end of the adventure. lets say its a 1000 gold.
your playing up, and the amount listed for 4th level is 1300. In that case you would get 1150. The players get a more hair raising adventure and extra gold they will need for expendables.
The designer in this case should design the session for 6 players at level 2 for the lower tier and 6 players at level 4 for the higher tier. In this example the 5th level character could only play the top tier and the first level can only play the lower tier. Characters 2 - 4 could play either based on the group's needs. If the group is right in the middle, have a silent vote counted by the GM, if any plays object, the group plays down.
I've heard that in some session 4 games the adventure is modified if there are only 4 players. For example for Boss fight only has two
big baddies rather than three. This to me is a good idea as well to round out options for the GM and scale the adventure.
The above example will make paperwork at the end of the session go very quickly. It would give players a strong framework for playing up or down with some, but not an overpowering reason to play up.
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My suggestion for players playing down is to give them the option to play for 0/0/0. They would get any boons and access to any items on the chronicle, but they would get no experience, no gold, and no prestige.
(let me re-iterate the word "Option")
This way players who do wind up playing down don't fall behind on the wealth curve. Essentially they are just playing for whatever boons might be on the chronicle.
Its unlikely consumables will be a big issue because they are playing a lower tier scenario.
I think this is a good option too.
Just keep in mind, that you should not just walk up to a table and say: "Oh you´re all lower level, i join you with this character and play down"Playing down or up is an option to make tables happen, not a free choice. If you can have another character more adequat joining, you use that one. Or if there are more adequate tables, you go there.
In between here i can really feel this vibe which might have caused the original problem of people being kind of selfish, insisting on playing certain characters and choosing tables where they can play up or down.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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The other thing is, is playing up between level tiers then wanted or not? By the old system you can legaly win there, with the new system you only have a harder challenge when i understand it right?
In the version of the Delayed Credit model I'm espousing, a between-tiers PC who plays up can take the high-tier chronicle immediately, just like they already do. I think this is a reasonable concession to alleviate concerns of wealth loss from having played down in a previous scenario or having spent extra consumables when having previously played up for low tier credit. So it would be sort of the "safety valve" for those concerns.
That does have the side effect of still being abusable, but the gap between abusing middle-level play-ups in the Delayed Credit system and abusing unrestrained play-ups in the current system is huge. Someone could warp WBL if they tried, but they couldn't completely and utterly shatter it like some people apparently do now.
In short, there would be enough wiggle room to make up any wealth losses, but not enough to wreck WBL.
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The other thing is, is playing up between level tiers then wanted or not? By the old system you can legaly win there, with the new system you only have a harder challenge when i understand it right?In the version of the Delayed Credit model I'm espousing, a between-tiers PC who plays up can take the high-tier chronicle immediately, just like they already do. I think this is a reasonable concession to alleviate concerns of wealth loss from having played down in a previous scenario or having spent extra consumables when having previously played up for low tier credit. So it would be sort of the "safety valve" for those concerns.
That does have the side effect of still being abusable, but the gap between abusing middle-level play-ups in the Delayed Credit system and abusing unrestrained play-ups in the current system is huge. Someone could warp WBL if they tried, but they couldn't completely and utterly shatter it like some people apparently do now.
In short, there would be enough wiggle room to make up any wealth losses, but not enough to wreck WBL.
By little wiggle room, you mean MUST play up at dead levels so the games you can play at such levels is extremely limited and as such you may not be able to play said character for MONTHS...then yeah...a little wiggle room is there. The fact that your unwilling to have a play up credit apply at dead levels for the play up credit is what makes this unworkable honestly. You want it to work like GM credit...well too bad, that ain't gona work mechanically. The ONLY way this even remotely has a chance of working out mechanically and not screwing over players who choose to play up is if you apply credit at the dead levels...not tier level AND consumables used can be clear immediately. Otherwise it STILL punishes playing up so...yeah no go. And it STILL has the widening level gap issue too.
Yeah yeah, I know the leadership has said how much they dislike the 2 1/2 idea...but that is basically the ONLY option that isn't WORSE then what we have now. With the caveat of course that PP is also doubled and halved as well. The people who proposed this idea seems pretty unwilling to do this...but the way the PP and fame system works, you really do have to do this or the idea is once again a no go without redoing the fame chart (and even then playing down need half PP to prevent fame farming).
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Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Martinsville
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I'd be ok with this if the person playing down got the low tier gold + half of their regular tier's gold. As is, I think it penalilizes the nice player playing down to make a table a little too much, though.Ok... I will once again propose my "Halvies" plan, which will use this statement in the Society Guide around the point where it talks about playing up or down.
"Players that play up or down will be rewarded gold based on the gold reward of the character's original tier, with the following adjustments. Characters playing up will get the full amount of their own tier's gold plus half of that again. Players playing down will get half of their own tier's gold plus half of the lower tier's gold that they are playing down to. Those characters whose level falls between the tiers will be considered a part of the lower tier."
This is basically "mid tier" gold. It is simple math, even if the DM rewards less than max gold. Playing up/down gold can be predone on future Chronicles Sheets, and it doesn't mess with EXP or Fame.
My belief is that the "IOU" system, basically treating a character like a pregen, or the +2 or +1/2 exp mold is getting way over complicated for a simple reward system.
I would rather have the mid tier gold that would still be around what a character should get in his career rather than getting short changed or have no incentive to play up other than "everyone else is better than you."
Anyone tell me what is wrong with this proposal?
Well, I am trying to keep the original purpose in mind that brought about the proposal of low tier gold for all when playing up or down. Keeping the players at their own tiers instead of awarding gold for the group census is most logical, so keeping the low tier players (playing up) at their own tier gold is a given. It would still be more gold than if they ran within their own tier but not an insane amount like we get now.
So to clarify, the person playing up will use his own tier as the bases for the reward, meaning that a 1-2 playing up would get 1-2 gold plus half of 1-2 gold again (average 500 + 250 = 750)
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Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Martinsville
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Regarding the exp 2 or half exp option.
I don't believe that finagling with the rate of EXP is gonna help all that much with the original purpose of the change. Society already is limited to level 11 (or 12 ish) and having character shoot through to the finish isn't something I see as a positive.
I have a character right now that has played multible mods as well as some scenarios which I started a scant six months ago. He is almost 7th level now.
To be sure, it seems like a dream for some, getting to level quicker, but I doubt that it would actually change the Wealth levels enough to make the change worth it for the developers.
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My suggestion for players playing down is to give them the option to play for 0/0/0. They would get any boons and access to any items on the chronicle, but they would get no experience, no gold, and no prestige.
(let me re-iterate the word "Option")
This way players who do wind up playing down don't fall behind on the wealth curve. Essentially they are just playing for whatever boons might be on the chronicle.
Its unlikely consumables will be a big issue because they are playing a lower tier scenario.
I think this is a good option too.
Just keep in mind, that you should not just walk up to a table and say: "Oh you´re all lower level, i join you with this character and play down"
Playing down or up is an [b]option to make tables happen,[/b] not a free choice. If you can have another character more adequat joining, you use that one. Or if there are more adequate tables, you go there.
In between here i can really feel this vibe which might have caused the original problem of people being kind of selfish, insisting on playing certain characters and choosing tables where they can play up or down.
+1
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Regarding the exp 2 or half exp option.
I don't believe that finagling with the rate of EXP is gonna help all that much with the original purpose of the change. Society already is limited to level 11 (or 12 ish) and having character shoot through to the finish isn't something I see as a positive.
I have a character right now that has played multible mods as well as some scenarios which I started a scant six months ago. He is almost 7th level now.
To be sure, it seems like a dream for some, getting to level quicker, but I doubt that it would actually change the Wealth levels enough to make the change worth it for the developers.
The 2 XP system actually completely fixes the wealth level. More so than the system you proposed. In order to see that, just do the math--pick your favorite two 5-9 scenarios. Now have one character take the 8-9 gold from the first 5-9 and get 2 XP. Then have the second character take the "halvsies" gold from both scenarios and get 2 XP. You will see that the first character, the one using the 2 XP option, has less gold.
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With the caveat of course that PP is also doubled and halved as well. The people who proposed this idea seems pretty unwilling to do this...
Well, I'd be happy to give full prestige for it if we can get people to agree to that. I don't think we can, and prestige should be the first thing we're willing to compromise here. With the gain in XP, playing up will be rarer and the loss should be minimizd (hopefully).
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I would clearly refuse to play up with a beloved character because the loss of PP and therefore fame is probably much ore crippling than gold in any way. What´s an excess of gold if you can´t buy important things because of fame limits? Or even more important the society stuff like raise dead etc? Don´t forget, there is a change coming too which makes getting 2PP a scenario more difficult and even now the average is said to be 4PP per level.
I don´t know how you play this, but my players had problems getting full PP. I gave them some hints because they are all new to PFS, but to be clear, in this scenario there were 2 faction missions they would never had managed.
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Yeah, if you're going to double the XP, you need to double the PP. Otherwise, the character who plays up a couple times will fall quickly behind others of his level, somewhat the opposite of characters who play up now.
I believe that is the whole point; to discourage playing up just for the sake of playing up. Instead the new system wants to propose that the only reason for playing up is to make a legal table.
The fact that they lose PP means someone is discouraged from playing up every game of their Pathfinder's life. They may end up with more gold but considerably less prestige.
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Yeah, if you're going to double the XP, you need to double the PP. Otherwise, the character who plays up a couple times will fall quickly behind others of his level, somewhat the opposite of characters who play up now.I believe that is the whole point; to discourage playing up just for the sake of playing up. Instead the new system wants to propose that the only reason for playing up is to make a legal table.
The fact that they lose PP means someone is discouraged from playing up every game of their Pathfinder's life. They may end up with more gold but considerably less prestige.
They generally won't end up with more gold either. The higher tier generally has slightly more than double the gold than the lower tier.
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They generally won't end up with more gold either. The higher tier generally has slightly more than double the gold than the lower tier.Yeah, if you're going to double the XP, you need to double the PP. Otherwise, the character who plays up a couple times will fall quickly behind others of his level, somewhat the opposite of characters who play up now.I believe that is the whole point; to discourage playing up just for the sake of playing up. Instead the new system wants to propose that the only reason for playing up is to make a legal table.
The fact that they lose PP means someone is discouraged from playing up every game of their Pathfinder's life. They may end up with more gold but considerably less prestige.
I am not sure you understand the intent of this whole initiative. The goal is to provide an alternate system to the Podcast suggested system. The system of all risk and no reward for playing up and no way to make up for higher characters for playing down.
The double xp / double low tier gold is a system that gives the lower level characters the ability to play up and gain rewards still. It also speeds up their level so they catch up to the high level players so that the issue of playing up is no longer an issue because they would be playing in teir.
However without a limitation or a reduced amount, such as only recieving 2 pp or 3 pp, it limits the drive for players to "game the system" and play up every single scenario because over time they'll fall behind in how much gold they can actually spend.
MMJ are trying to stop players from playing up every scenario of their Pathfinder's life and ending up with sometimes 2 or 2.5 times the amount of suggested Wealth By Level. This system while not perfect would adress that issue as would several other systems presented in this thread.
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The people who are catching up using the XPx2+GOLDx2 system are getting penalized by missing out on 1-2 pp per scenario, guaranteed, compared to if they play normally, if they don't get PPx2 as well. That's a pretty severe reduction in comparative power level once they actually catch up to their buddies.
MMJ are trying to stop players from playing up every scenario of their Pathfinder's life and ending up with sometimes 2 or 2.5 times the amount of suggested Wealth By Level.
XPx2+GOLDx2+PPx2 still solves this problem. There's no need to punish players playing up (by choice or to fill a table) by forcing them to receive half the fame earned than they would playing normally.
Decreasing the number of times played at a particular level (which reduces consumable usage, just like playing slow advancement increases consumable usage) is directly countered by actually playing at the higher tier, which is more likely to force the character to spend more money (something that playing slow advancement doesn't have). It's actually more likely that the character will spend more money in one scenario's upper tier than they would in two scenarios' lower tier, which means, in the long run, the character that played at the upper tier will have less money than if he had just played normally (if they didn't use any consumables in the higher tier, they wouldn't have at the lower tier, either). I'm fine with this, but further penalizing the character by reducing his fame by half is just too much.
Codanous, how would a player 'game the system' in the XPx2+GOLDx2+PPx2 model? It's effectively 'fast progression' at a very large increased risk compared to 'normal progression' (as opposed to to slow progression, which doesn't have reduced risk, and actually has increased gold/pp attrition), with no benefit aside from the character getting to the level the player wants faster than he would otherwise. All other rewards are equivalent to 'normal' and 'slow' progression at best, which is what we want.
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I've started to look at my characters to see if the play up/play down thing is an issue in reality
so far my first PFS character is 18th level, and in the first 33 mods he played, he played up in 3, down in 4, and at level in 26. and that's counting situations where I'm between levels (like a level 3 playing down in a 1-2. he's not "At" tier so I called something like that playing down.)
I'll look at the rest soon.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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So, I've been thinking about this since the podcast aired, as well as keeping up with the boards discussion. Out of all the options presented, I'm so far really enjoying the Delayed Chronicle idea vs. the 2X approach or even the halvsies idea.
Is the system supposed to be about convincing people to play up? Aren't things designed so that people should play at-tier? If the problem is based on people who have higher WBL than normal because they've been playing up, why are we just trying to change the reward? Because if playing up will suddenly get me up past boring 2nd level cleric spells even faster, then I'm going to try and play up as much as I can. And I'm saying this as someone who didn't really care about gaming the WBL gap. But gaming this new "Fast XP Progression" seems worth the time.
Why do we want to try and reward that kind of behavior? Paizo can come up with some other incentive to help friends catch up or whatever else people are talking about in this thread. Let's split up the problems and focus on them one by one.
First step, let's stop incentivizing people to game the system by playing up.
Second step, worry about fixing mismatched tables, helping people catch up when they miss scenarios, or special boons for people when they take a hit to make a table happen.
These aren't exactly the same problem. We don't have to fix them all at the same time.
Anyway, I'm way late to this argument, but I just want to sit at a table with characters of similar levels, wealth, and prestige, and play a game. Whatever option makes that happen is the right one.
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Second step, worry about fixing mismatched tables, helping people catch up when they miss scenarios, or special boons for people when they take a hit to make a table happen.
The 2xp/3pp double low tier gold is geared to do exactly this. It fixes mis-matched tables. It lets someone catch up without making all of the high level players either use the slow track or make new characters. Instead the low level player can take the hit instead of making five other people take the hit.
I agree the delayed chronicle is also a really good idea and I'd personally be happy with either. I am just trying to high light the benefits of the 2xp/3pp double low tier gold system.
The point is, it doesn't let someone play up as often by making them level faster. Instead of the 2nd or 1st level character potentially playing up six times, it reduces it to 3 times. Then from 3rd and on they are back at playing "in tier for 9 more scenarios". It sucks, that guy is at 5th level and 3 prestige behind. A typical level 5 character will have 24 prestige. A character that had to play up for 2 levels with the 2xp/3pp/double low teir gold will have 21. That isn't that much of a difference in the scheme of things.
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Is the system supposed to be about convincing people to play up? Aren't things designed so that people should play at-tier? If the problem is based on people who have higher WBL than normal because they've been playing up, why are we just trying to change the reward? Because if playing up will suddenly get me up past boring 2nd level cleric spells even faster, then I'm going to try and play up as much as I can. And I'm saying this as someone who didn't really care about gaming the WBL gap. But gaming this new "Fast XP Progression" seems worth the time.
Why do we want to try and reward that kind of behavior? Paizo can come up with some other incentive to help friends catch up or whatever else people are talking about in this thread. Let's split up the problems and focus on them one by one.
First step, let's stop incentivizing people to game the system by playing up.
Second step, worry about fixing mismatched tables, helping people catch up when they miss scenarios, or special boons for people when they take a hit to make a table happen.
These aren't exactly the same problem. We don't have to fix them all at the same time.
Anyway, I'm way late to this argument, but I just want to sit at a table with characters of similar levels, wealth, and prestige, and play a game. Whatever option makes that happen is the right one.
[Apologies for whatever typos. I'm working from my phone here, and it doesn't play well with this text-box]
I'm not understanding the almost moralizing or aesthetic objection to playing up. Playing at-tier is the default and the intention, but there's nothing *wrong* with playing up, in itself. The problem is if playing out-of-tier (up or down) leads to bad consequences: the skewed WBL that results under the current system. The only real objection (perhaps slight exaggeration, but it feels like it) to the Half Or Double proposal seems to be this thought that it allows "cheating" (That's WRONG! You're doing it wrong! That's not how it's supposed to be done!). But (i) if that is a concern it can be addressed by a small PP penalty to discourage continuous out-of-tier play. And (ii) is that really a problem? Doesn't look like it. Even if there were no penalty at all, even if it was a pure "hard mode" fast XP track, what would be the problem there? It wouldn't mess the game up for anybody else to have someone who liked to play that way. And since it's only messing the game up for others that's the problem, there's no problem at all here. And (iii):
Anyone listening to this, I think, can understand what our motives are in doing this. It's not to punish anyone or tell people they're playing the wrong way, it really is more to try and bring the game in line with the expectations of the game in terms of character wealth and to try and provide the best play experience for the community as a whole regarding, you know, as Perram mentioned, the pressure to play up and things like that.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I'm not understanding the almost moralizing or aesthetic objection to playing up. Playing at-tier is the default and the intention, but there's nothing *wrong* with playing up, in itself.
I'm great with people playing the game however they choose. Go ahead and be challenged. I'm not so good with people choosing to play in a way that gives them better rewards than "normal" players. I'm very-much-not-so-good with the idea that some players will advance twice as quickly, getting them into higher tier play at a significantly faster rate than others. I think getting to sit at a 7-11 table IS the reward for the playing the game, whatever wealth you have. We should all get there at the same rate.
Unless you choose to take longer, this game takes 33 scenarios before a PC can retire. If the problem is wealth, why are we looking at changing a totally different and fundamental aspect of play to fix a wealth problem?
#teamDelayedChronicles