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I can't see any reason to punish players for being engaged in the scenario and using creative solutions.
I always reward players for creativity. In your example, yes, I'd give them the 10gp (it would just be added to the BBEG's treasure).
Obviously, you can't edit the chronicle sheet, and you should adhere to the PFSGtOP, and you need to respect the players' comfort level with "outside the box GMing", but you are *still* a GM.
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Well, hopefully the scenario author would never presume that somebody would fall in and make the treasure conditional upon it.
As a GM, I'd handle that situation by saying that the character disabling/detecting the trap noticed the glint of gold.
In general, avoiding or negotiating through an encounter should garner the same rewards as fighting through it.
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Well, hopefully the scenario author would never presume that somebody would fall in and make the treasure conditional upon it.
As a GM, I'd handle that situation by saying that the character disabling/detecting the trap noticed the glint of gold.
In general, avoiding or negotiating through an encounter should garner the same rewards as fighting through it.
I know of at least one scenario where you lost out on a faction mission if you did not set off a trap (thankfully that is no longer an issue).
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2 off the top of my head. One time I had to point out how lucky the Other person was.
"So you just had the very perceptive druid roll a 2 on the perception check to see the trap, when they would have made it with a 3
I then got a 1 on a reflex save to fall into the pit despite having a good dex.
The person that did this not only has the incredibly bad luck to wind up into the pit, but they also have the scholar of ruins trait and a maxed out knowledge dungeoneering necessary to identify your fungus.
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It could be argued that creatively avoiding the trap doesn't mean that they are entitled to the 100gp by default. As you say:
"But the PCs found the trap, safely set it off, and navigated around the pit without looking in."
Not forgetting that Pathfinder Society is 'Explore, Document, Cooperate' ;)
The PCs managed to avoid the pit but by choosing not to look in it, they missed out on what was within. The pit could have contained something important or useful to the mission (As seen in a certain popular S5 scenario with a Minotaur..) and so they should be encouraged to check out pits generally.
HOWEVER, IMO the spirit of the creative statement applies, as David H mentions and I, personally, would find another way later to reward them with the same gold. The glint of gold, suggestion of a corpse at the bottom, etc.
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In the Pathfinder Society Guide to Organised Play, under the section Creative Solutions, it states:
Sometimes during the course of a scenario, your players might surprise you with a creative solution to an encounter (or the entire scenario) that you didn’t see coming and that isn’t expressly covered in the scenario.
How literally should this statement be interpreted? If a module with a pit-trap states something akin to:
Should the PCs search the bottom of the trap, they receive the following rewards: 10gp
But the PCs found the trap, safely set it off, and navigated around the pit without looking in.
The module expressly stated that the PCs must search the bottom of the pit in order to receive the awards. Is this considered "explicitly covered"?
Did the players explicitly say they were not looking in the pit as they navigated around it? Or did they just fail to say explicitly that they were looking? And what was the DC of the Perception check to find the gold in the trap?
Over my years as a player, I have had GMs who looked for any tiny excuse to punish the players.* So if I said "I'm looking around the desk for traps, Perception 27", the GM would say, "Aha! But you didn't say you were looking UNDER the desk, so you set off the trap!" This leads to the amazingly tedious procedure of "I search the three squares in front of me. Do I see a trap? OK, I step forward 5 feet and search the next three squares..."
Personally, as a player, I find that painfully frustrating and boring, and as a PFS GM, I just don't have the time. My new approach to this whole problem is just to assume that when players are looking around, moving cautiously, etc., that they are always taking 10 on their Perception checks. I use initiative cards with their Perception modifiers on it, so when they enter a room, I can flip through and see if anyone's take 10 beats the Perception DC. If so, I just tell them they found it. If not, I'll roll for them in private, and then tell them what they find.
Now, if the players explicitly say something like, "I'm afraid of heights, so I'm not looking into the pit as we go over", or "I'm not going into that room", obviously, that changes things.
*To be fair, a few of them may have just been applying computer-game mechanics to RPs, but at least two had "kill the player characters" as their stated goal when we played.
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A recent scenario has this:
Creative Players: Players should be encouraged to come up with their own creative methods for achieving the Society’s goals in [redacted]. It’s important to foster these ideas, but not let the players completely nullify the design intent of the scenario. Use the example encounters and situations provided in the scenario to adjudicate how a player’s idea would unfold and adjust the remainder of the scenario accordingly, keeping in mind the enjoyment of everyone at the table. Do not let a small group of players hijack the investigation at the expense of others’ involvement.
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I think the issue here is that the scenario actually referred to a skill check; a specific action (searching in a particular area).
Was that actually a straight-up reward for clearing the trap, even if you'd fallen in? I don't think so. Maybe a passive perception check is fair.
Having said that, having a monetary reward is a bit of a rare case for this kind of thing, and I wouldn't subtract it off the chronicle sheet.
If it were an item, it would just mean the characters wouldn't be able to use that item for the duration of that scenario, but would still get it on the chronicle ("finding it" later). Considering it's gold, I'd rule the same thing.
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I see this very much as a GM call. I don't how exactly it played out at the table or details of the encounter. It really depends on the situation at hand.
One scenario has a treasure at the bottom of a pit that the party can clearly see and bypass, but at the bottom is a treasure that the party can recover. If they bypass the pit [by spell, jumping, walkway, etc.], I do not think they should get the reward since the reward is for exploring the pit more than getting past the obstacle.
If I were running a scenario where a pit trap was found, triggered, and bypassed, I would describe there being something at the bottom of the pit. If the party then opts to not investigate it I wouldn't give the reward for finding the item. This doesn't sound like this is what happened in your game though.
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Actually, from what I understand, that scenario explicitly says that if you don't explore the pit, you don't get the reward.
Rewards: If the PCs fail to find the songbirds or they bypass the trap entirely, reduce each PC's gold earned as follows.
Subtier 5–6: Reduce each PC's gold earned by 941 gp.
Out of Subtier: Reduce each PC's gold earned by 1,191 gp.
Subtier 8–9: Reduce each PC's gold earned by 1,441 gp.
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Well, i think the GM was right there.
A short "I take a closer look at the trap, what do i see?" is not slowing down the game.
It is not the GMs job to play the game for the PCs. if they don´t search a room, they don´t get the treasure.
If a GM rules it otherwise, assuming the PCs search every room automatically, that is also totally fine with the rules. Different GM, different styles.
And concerning coming back and summoning monster all the traps:
Not every Szenario gives you that amount of time and IMO should not. Finding the treasure is one major aspect of the game and if this becomes more or less something you do automatically, it will IMO spoil the fun.
I totally agree that a GM can be too picky about it, like rolling perception for every 5 ft. square to find a trap. This is of course not what i mean.
But again: as a GM you have to find a way between these two extremes and every GM has his own way to do it.
I had a discussion about something related:
How realistic is it to assume that a PC does not know about the DR of a skeleton?
Well, it might be true, but it is not about punishing the PC who has no skillpoints in knowledge religion, it is more about rewarding the PC who has skillpoints in knowledge religion.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Hamburg
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Well, from the description of the situation given above, the GM could have asked for a Perception check from those charactes standing adjacent to the pit to see if they notice something in there.
The problem I see here is that when a GM tells me there is a pit trap, I assume it's exactly that: a pit trap. I don't expect to see treasure in a pit trap. It's a trap, not a treasure chest.
I have already seen a few pits that had treasure in them (all in PFS), and it seems like scenario authors want to have us look into every pit trap we encounter as if it's a treasure chest. I suppose a game gets very boring if at every pit trap, the players say "We look into the pit. Is there anything of value?".
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What's the logic behind treasure in a pit trap anyway? The gold from previous unfortunate adventurers who fell in?If I remember the scenario correctly, that is actually what the 'treasure' at the bottom of that particular pit is called-out as being from :-)
Okay - but we still run into the issue of why it's still there unless the pit-trap is super sophisticated and re-sets itself mechanically or magically.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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A worse one involves a fairly substantial piece of treasure / ammo.
We found the trap and trigger, and carefully chalked around the trigger plate with warnings and went on. As a result, we probably shouldn't have gotten the ammo from the trap on our chronicle sheet, since you only find it if you disassemble the trap.
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Actually, from what I understand, that scenario explicitly says that if you don't explore the pit, you don't get the reward.
** spoiler omitted **
From the spoiler:
...or if they bypass the trap entirely, reduce each PC's gold earned as follows
From Disable Device:
A rogue who beats a trap's DC by 10 or more can study the trap, figure out how it works, and bypass it without disarming it. A rogue can rig a trap so her allies can bypass it as well.
I'm going to hope that this is just a wording coincidence and that the scenario doesn't specifically intend to punish highly skilled or just very lucky PCs. If the Rogue has maxed out Disable Device and is able to "bypass" the trap, denying them part of the gold for doing so seems like a really jerk move.
Again, this comes across as influence from video games. I've seen video games where players learned to randomly jump into the air, because sometimes, there are invisible reward squares there (for no reason, with no clues), and you miss out. I also remember the common advice of "touch everything! You never know what might be active!"
Noticeably, these video games rarely any hint of a story worth telling. I will also confess that I hated these kinds of video games, and the prevalence of them during my "developmental years" as a gamer greatly contributed to turning me off of video games altogether.
This "touch everything!" and "randomly jump on every screen" mentality is the equivalent of demanding our players trigger every single trap, slit open the belly of every dead monster ("You never know what he ate last!"), and take 20 to search every square. It's a waste of time (in and out of game), it interferes with the story, and it goes against everything the players and PCs are supposed to do.
You're supposed to bypass traps. You're supposed to have more than one way to get past an obstacle. As a GM, I find it annoying to have to punish players because they happened to choose the "wrong" way to overcome an obstacle.
I can think of at least one other scenario where the players on a time-sensitive mission, but some of the gold is dependent on taking time out of their time-sensitive mission and searching an area. Even better, there's no indication they should search the area (outside of the old school "There was a monster--there must be treasure nearby" mentality), and the search was clearly a digression from their time-sensitive mission. As a writer, I would have punished the players for taking the digression and rewarded those that completely ignored the possibility of "dead monster treasure" and focused on their mission (did I mention it was time sensitive?).
In PFS, we have a unique advantage of being able to abstract reward from encounter. You don't actually have to dig through every pile of offal looking for each gold piece: the society can just choose to give you a bonus at the end of the mission. I mean, if we want to worry about "realism" in a fantasy RPG, then someone's going to have to start explaining what the heck these monsters have been eating for the hundred-some years before the PCs entered the completely sealed tomb...
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Well, i think the GM was right there.
A short "I take a closer look at the trap, what do i see?" is not slowing down the game.
It is not the GMs job to play the game for the PCs. if they don´t search a room, they don´t get the treasure.
I agree with that: if the players don't go in a particular room, they don't get any of the penalties or rewards for that room.
But if the players are walking carefully along the edge of the pit, and at least one has a high enough bonus to make the DC on a 10 or less, I would at least tell them that they notice something in the pit as they are going across. (There are defined penalties for distance, so you can easily adjust the DC for them not being down in the pit.)
Waiting for the magic words "I search" before giving the players a Perception check seems kind of picky.
To be fair, my experience is colored by having played with this GM (not in PFS):
You said you "look" in the pit--the module says you have to "search" the pit. "Searching" is not the same as "looking"! Ha!
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Well, searching is not looking......wtf!
That is the kind of stuff that would make me never play again with a GM.
But in this special case i think i would have ruled similar.
Like I said, this was one of two GMs I've had who felt their role was to beat the PCs (one of them openly stated that his goal was to kill every PC, every time), and any time they could trick or fool the players was a bonus. There were lots of leading descriptions, specifically leaving out details unless we asked--the whole game was a series of "gotcha!" moments and increasingly ridiculous precautions:
Round 1Player: I look in the room. Do I see anything dangerous?
GM: No.
Player: I step into the room--
GM: You didn't say you looked up at the ceiling! Gotcha!
Round 2
Player: OK, I look in the room, and I specifically look up at the ceiling. Do I see anything dangerous?
GM: No.
Player: I step into the room--
GM: You didn't say you down at the floor! Gotcha!
Round 3
Player: OK, I look in the room, and I specifically look up at the ceiling, down at the floor, and every other possible direction. Do I see anything dangerous?
GM: No.
Player: I step into the room--
GM: You get stabbed by a rogue!
Player: But you said I didn't see anything...
GM: The rogue is a person, not a thing! Gotcha!
And so on.
I am waaaaaay too old to play that version of the game. I have neither the time nor the patience to semantically parse every word spoken at the table, looking for traps. ("Hmmm...was that an ablative of means or just a preposition that takes an accusative?")
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if players have problems with how a gm is ruling they should complain to their vl or vc. if said gm is a vl or vc, they should complain higher up the food chain. that is the only way things will change. either the player is in the wrong, and someone in authority will tell them so, or the gm is wrong, and someone in authority will deal with it. bad gms shouldn't be allowed to run pfs scenarios, and is one of the few things vls and vcs have control over. bad gms lead to bad table experiences, bad table experiences lead to people disliking a great game because of one person. people disliking it leads to bad press and so on.
it is better for us all if we police ourselves, if we tell others we have a problem with how things are done. if there is a table full of people who have had a bad time, it is usually obvious who is at fault. if that person can be talked to reasonably, by a person with authority, i think it only makes pfs better as a whole.
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I suppose I should add that anyone that doesn't gives pcs the treasure from the bottom of a pit trap is just a jerk. The fact that it is there is cool and funny, but to punish people for not hearing about the cool funny thing someone put in there is just wrong.
Hiding treasure in stupid places is ridiculous, whether it be at the bottom of a pit or the belly of a beast. It doesn't add to the game in any way to make people think they hafta rip down every wall, dig up every floor panel, break into every cabinet just because there might be a ruby hanging out there left by the ruby fairy. If anything, I would say it detracts from it and adds to the whole murder hobo mess.
The money is all make believe money, being spent on fantasy items. Who cares if they didn't jump through whatever silly hoop the writer wanted them to jump through. If they dealt with the encounter and lived on to the next one, they deserve the imaginary money.
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It's down to the scenario. I've mentioned in other threads that whether or not I give the treasure in situations like this usually comes down to how the scenario ends. If it's a dungeon crawl that they completely clear there's plenty of time to thoroughly search the place, go back to Area 4, and pick up that 400 lbs of mithral. However if it's a cross-country chase and they don't figure out a way to carry those 6 stone tablets they found on day 2 with them it's likely lost.
I had a scenario at GenCon where I gave the party a choice of endings:
Me: "You are 4 days from the nearest town and most of you are suffering from afflictions of various types. [High-level NPC] is leaving now and offers to teleport you back to the town. Do you want to take her up on it or work your own way back?"
Players: "Why would we take that kind of time?"
Me: "Remember how you found a hidden door but haven't figured out how to open it?"
Players: "We'll make our own way back."
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Okay - but we still run into the issue of why it's still there unless the pit-trap is super sophisticated and re-sets itself mechanically or magically.What's the logic behind treasure in a pit trap anyway? The gold from previous unfortunate adventurers who fell in?If I remember the scenario correctly, that is actually what the 'treasure' at the bottom of that particular pit is called-out as being from :-)
Or the care takers of the area care not about the monetary wealth, but about the sweet, sweet tears of the fallen heroes.
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if players have problems with how a gm is ruling they should complain to their vl or vc. if said gm is a vl or vc, they should complain higher up the food chain. that is the only way things will change.
DM gets a note, DM gets annoyed, DM stops dming. DM either gets replaced by someone with less experience who is probably going to be at least as bad, or worse, doesn't get replaced at all and games stop happening.
Make sure the sin is big enough to run the risk.
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if players have problems with how a gm is ruling they should complain to their vl or vc. if said gm is a vl or vc, they should complain higher up the food chain. that is the only way things will change.DM gets a note, DM gets annoyed, DM stops dming. DM either gets replaced by someone with less experience who is probably going to be at least as bad, or worse, doesn't get replaced at all and games stop happening.
Make sure the sin is big enough to run the risk.
I've had more problems with experienced GMs than newer ones. Experience can also mean dogmatic stubbornness and having a mistake ingrained 50 times.
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f "the sin" is big enough for someone to feel the need to report it, they should report it.
We've both been around long enough to see some pretty unjustified nerd rage on the boards, not to mention legitimate differences in interpretation. You'd report me for not letting you take 10 in the dissapeared, and I'd probably flip a table on David Bowles trying to run my animal companion.
Feelings are often a poor measure of the situation. People in this hobby ... well lets just say dumping charisma isn't just for our characters. And we can be a little idiosyncratic in our personalities. Put the two together and there's really no way to tell someone "you're doing that wrong" without a risk of causing a bigger problem than you solve.
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nah, I don't even blink on the "you can't take 10 on that skill" stuff... no report. I get it all the time. Last ones were "you can't take 10 on a climb check if you are higher than 10 feet" because there is the distraction of falling, and "you can't take 10 on Knowledge checks - it's in the rules someplace"...
All of which you'd need to go boards diving to disprove. (The falling thing especially, as the 3.5 example with krusk seemed like it was tailor made to remove falling as a possibility)
The only time I have every "reported" a judge was the one that spent 4 hours screaming at me (and several of the other players)... worse then my drill instructor in Army Basic Training...and he got me to stop gaming with strangers for weeks and stop going to conventions for 6 months (fear of encountering other people like him - yeah it was that bad). And I'll never go back to that convention again.
Reporting that sounds like a good call.
"Make sure the sin is big enough to run the risk" is just going to get most players not to...
That's a completely random criticism.
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actually, I was trying to make the point that you appeared to be advising people NOT to report problems.
Not to report small problems. Big difference.
The fact is that if you "tell the teacher" on a DM for every mistake there's a reasonable chance its going to create more problems than it solves. "Make sure its worth it" is not the same as "don't do it".
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Well I have had my share of bad GMs (not with PFS), but never anything that bad. And frankly, while I think that GMs should play the monsters and traps to the best of their ability, some of the examples above seem above seem downright illegal (those gotcha moments, people have a Perception skill for a reason).
I think it is reasonable, to give a short report, if it doesn’t seem to be possible to talk to the GM or the organizer after the game. Likewise, it seems prudent if you catch you GM making an error (that doesn’t have to be resolved in game) to inform him after the game. Maybe the NPC statblock didn’t mention that a an arcanists counterspell is an immediate action, maybe the GM was unaware of an errata or a faq entry, everybody misses something, but unless someone mentions it…
This is a personal problem, but whenever I see something like this happen, I can’t just ignore it. Frankly the excuse not to report/exchange someone because the replacement situation isn’t clear doesn’t always work. I spend plenty of time in wow, and usually if the raid leader happend to lose their temper way to often, or wasn’t willing to explain an encounter .. well it usually ended with me giving the explanations, and solving conflicts. On several occasions (I played wow for a long time, with breaks) players were unwilling to raid, with a particular raid leader, and more often than not I usually got more work.
While this is absolutely anecdotal, a well intentioned player that is willing to transition into the role of a GM (even if he ends up making every possible mistake) is always better, than an experienced GM that is poisoning the game.
At every table you are likely to find people who are good at something, I for instance have delegated the issue of tracking the initiative to one of my players (with a Comat Pad.), and even of you don’t have a rules lawer, asking a player (who isn’t currently acting in the initiative) to look up and unclear rule can be a boon to every GM.
TL:DR: Turns out, there is a wrong way to play this game.