Clarified Rules for Earning Prestige Points

[John Compton]

Page 32 of the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play was not as clear as it could have been regarding how one earns Prestige Points with the disappearance of the "traditional" faction missions. The plan is to release an updated version of the Guide on Monday that—in conjunction with the Pathfinder Society FAQ incorporates some of the feedback, corrections, and improvements that Mike, Mark, and I read on the message boards. I fully understand that waiting a weekend to read the updates is difficult, particularly with Gen Con travel plans kicking into gear for many of you, so I have reprinted the text for the entire "Adapting Seasons 0–4" section below.

Important: There is a supplementary document mentioned in the text below, and the plan is to have this document available for download after Gen Con and as soon as possible—likely in the mid–late August range. I am sure that there will be plenty of people who read the Guide and do not read this post due to no fault of their own, so if you see forum-goers or speak with friends who have not read this clarification, kindly direct them to this post.

Until such as time as the supplementary document for secondary missions is made available, award 1 Prestige Point to a character so long as he or she earned 1 XP in a Season 0–4 scenario. Assign 1 additional Prestige Point to that character so long as the Pathfinders met the primary mission objective (for Seasons 0–2) or printed Success Condition (Seasons 3–4).

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Adapting Seasons 0–4
Because the Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign has evolved over its lifetime, some small adjustments need to be made when running scenarios from Seasons 0–4 under the current rules. Below are instructions for converting Scenarios #0–1 to #4–26.

Season 0 (Scenarios #1–#28): Season 0 scenarios were written under the 3.5 rules set of the world’s oldest roleplaying game, before the release of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Scenarios are to be run with minimal changes by GMs, limited to adding CMB/CMD scores to NPCs and monsters and using newly combined skills such as Stealth and Perception instead of Move Silently and Spot. If a creature in the scenario also appears in the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2, or Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 3 and maintains the same CR between both rules sets, you may use the Pathfinder RPG stats in place of the 3.5 stats. This is the only substitution allowed in these scenarios.

Prestige awards and faction missions: Faction missions no longer count towards the success conditions of a scenario, but they may be used to add extra flavor to the game session. Instead, earning Prestige is tied to fulfilling the primary and secondary success conditions of each mission. The primary and secondary success conditions grant 1 Prestige Point each, for a maximum total of 2 Prestige Points. The primary success condition for a Season 0–2 scenario is the overall scenario’s goal; Season 3–4 scenarios instead use the Success Condition included after the scenario’s Conclusion section. A free, supplementary document available for download at paizo.com/pathfinderSociety/pfsproducts/pfsFreeProducts details the secondary success condition for each scenario.

Seasons 0–2: For the first three seasons of the campaign, only five factions were available for characters to ally with. As such, members of the newer factions introduced in Season 3 playing older scenarios may utilize faction missions from another faction, as follows.
• Grand Lodge faction PCs should treat Osirion faction missions as their own for all Season 0, 1, and 2 scenarios.
• Sczarni faction PCs should treat Taldor faction missions as their own for all Season 0, 1, and 2 scenarios.
• Silver Crusade faction PCs should treat Andoran faction missions as their own for all Season 0, 1, and 2 scenarios.
Seasons 3–4: Two factions that are now retired—the Lantern Lodge and Shadow Lodge—were available for characters to ally with during Seasons 3–4; ignore these factions’ missions.

Slow advancement track rewards: The slow advancement track option was introduced in Season 3. The maximum amount of gold a slow advancement track PC can earn from pre-season 3 scenarios is half the listed amount (or Out-of-Subtier amount, see below) rounded down. Similarly, a Pathfinder using the slow advancement track may only earn a maximum of 1 Prestige Point for completing both mission objectives: 1/2 for completing the primary mission objective and 1/2 for completing the secondary mission objective. The pre-entered +1 XP on Chronicle sheets from Season 0–2 scenarios should be changed to +1/2 for PCs using the slow advancement track.

Out-of-Subtier gold: The Out-of-Subtier value was introduced in Season 5; therefore, Chronicle sheets from Seasons 0–4 do not include these wealth tables for normal or slow progression. The Out-of-Subtier gold value is the average of the high and low subtiers; for slow progression it is half the normal Out-of-Subtier value, rounded down.
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Thanks, and have a good weekend.

[Drogon]

I like the fact that you're adding secondary success conditions to everything. Very nice.

Even better: you can always update the secondary conditions due to potential future changes (other factions going away or being created and/or the Fame system changing again).

Well done, gentlemen. Yet again. (-:

[CRobledo]

+1 to all above!

I am assuming the "supplementary document" for older scenarios would not be ready by Gencon, yes? We should use your solution in the opening paragraphs for now.

[rknop]

Thanks! This is much, much clearer. I now know what to do.

Any idea when these secondary conditions will be released? I would imagine it would be a lot of work to compile them for four seasons worth of PFS scenarios...!

[John Compton]

CRobledo wrote:

+1 to all above!

I am assuming the "supplementary document" for older scenarios would not be ready by Gencon, yes? We should use your solution in the opening paragraphs for now.

Yes, use the temporary policy for Gen Con (except for Season 5, of course). The document will not be ready until after that convention.

[John Compton]

rknop wrote:

Thanks! This is much, much clearer. I now know what to do.

Any idea when these secondary conditions will be released? I would imagine it would be a lot of work to compile them for four seasons worth of PFS scenarios...!

Yes, as noted above, the document should be available around mid-late August, barring strange, unforeseen circumstances.

[Ferious Thune]

John, thank you very much for taking the time to clarify this. It makes sense now, and I, too, like the idea of adding a secondary objective to older scenarios. I can now answer the many questions I expect to get at our game day tomorrow with some confidence.

[Lab_Rat]

So just to clarify. Faction missions listed in seasons 0-4 are for flavor only now. We no longer have to hand out faction missions unless we want to. At GenCon (for seasons 0-4) we will award 1 prestige if the player received 1 XP and we will award 1 prestige if the player met the mission objective/success conditions.

[Michael Brock]

Lab_Rat wrote:

So just to clarify. Faction missions listed in seasons 0-4 are for flavor only now. We no longer have to hand out faction missions unless we want to. At GenCon (for seasons 0-4) we will award 1 prestige if the player received 1 XP and we will award 1 prestige if the player met the mission objective/success conditions.

That is correct.

[Serum]

This only comes into effect starting tomorrow, correct?

[Aeshuura]

I was under the impression that it went into effect today...

[Todd Lower]

Aeshuura wrote:

I was under the impression that it went into effect today...

Gen-Con starts tomorrow.

[Jiggy]

How did I miss this thread until now? Very helpful, thanks John!

[GM Lamplighter]

Ditto!

One question, though - should GM's be prepared to hand out faction missions if a player requests one? Or can the GM decide they're not handing them out at all? I assume the former, but just checking.

[Fromper]

As a GM, I plan to give the players my opinion on the quality of the faction missions in a scenario, then let them decide if they want them. And I won't insist on everyone getting/missing them as a group. If there's a particularly good faction mission for one faction, I'll give that one to that player, even if I skip the more bland and/or pointless missions for the other factions at the same table.

That is, of course, unless Paizo HQ rules that faction missions are "all or nothing" or gives us a specific requirement on how to decide if we give them out.

[Black Powder Chocobo]

Yea, QfP pt3 is one where for only a couple of people I'd hand out Faction Missions (definitely Sczarni there mwa ha ha ha).

[Mystic Lemur]

Todd Lower wrote:

Aeshuura wrote:

I was under the impression that it went into effect today...

Gen-Con starts tomorrow.

But the Guide is dated August 14th, which is today.

[GM Lamplighter]

I'm thinking along the same lines, Fromper - I was mostly asking since it sounded like some GMs were planning to not offer faction missions at all. If a player wants to do the faction missions, they should be able to do them.

[Aeshuura]

When can we expect the supplement for the secondary conditions? There is nothing right now.

[CRobledo]

Aeshuura wrote:

When can we expect the supplement for the secondary conditions? There is nothing right now.

John Compton wrote:

Yes, as noted above, the document should be available around mid-late August, barring strange, unforeseen circumstances.

You know, these guys JUST ran a 4-5 day convention in Indianapolis? I'm sure it's on their list and until they have a chance to we can continue using the temporary rules without problems.

[Aeshuura]

Sorry, I guess I didn't read close enough. I was looking at the Guide, rather than reading the OOC stuff about the temporary rules. Thanks!

[David_Bross]

Can we get a sticky on this thread please?

[Avatar-1]

Any news on that supplement document which is meant to be at paizo.com/pathfinderSociety/pfsproducts/pfsFreeProducts by mid to late August?

[My PFS Lavode De'Morcaine]

dot

[malone ranger 130]

I still wasn't able to find the new supplemental document. If I did miss it, excuse this post. If it still hasn't made it to distribution, may I suggest the possibility of rolling out the supplemental document as a series instead of one document? I am not sure which year of scenarios are getting the most play right now, but I would request going in reverse order, Season 4, Season 3 and down to Season 0.

[Aeshuura]

It is not ready yet. I assume we will be updated in a blog or something.

[John Compton]

The plan is to release them all at once. The document is coming together nicely and should be available fairly soon.

[David Bowles]

Hats off to the devs. Most game systems don't give old content this much love.

[Paz]

I'm really looking forward to this new way of doing prestige in older scenarios. My only concern with this document is accidentally spoiling scenario #2-35 for myself when my eyes drift as I'm reading the prestige point arrangements for scenario #2-36.

I imagine it's a challenge to make sure the rules are crystal clear for GMs, while being as cryptic as possible to anyone who happens to glance at the document.

[Scott Romanowski]

They could put it all in rot13! They we'd un-obfuscate only the scenarios we need.

[FLite]

Unless you can read rot13 (some people spent too much time on usenet back in the day.)

[Sior]

FLite wrote:

Unless you can read rot13 (some people spent too much time on usenet back in the day.)

Or are avid geocachers who look at hints too much...

Tries to look innocent... Fails.

[John Compton]

Please note that the above short-term fix is no longer applicable; the Secondary Success Conditions document is now available for download.