How does time pass in PFS?

[NJHeart2Heart]

Hi all,
New player here.. I have a Druid character and am developing her animal companion. I was reading about "training so and so takes 2 weeks".. How does one designate time in PFS?

Right now I'm part of a small group that plays every other week.

Thank you!

[Auriea]

Time is irrelevant outside of the scenarios, so the two week time frame can be done between games.

[Blackbot]

Flutter postet an excellent thread with everything you want to know about an animal companion.

Also:
Google Doc!

Most interesting thing for you: Your first animal companion starts with as many tricks as it can learn, no training required.

[Andreas Forster]

Time between scenarios is not defined. Rather, there are rules for things that take a certain amount of time.

For animal companions, there's these rules:
- The first time you aquire an animal companion (in most cases by taking a level in a class that grants an animal companion), the companion gets its maximum number of tricks (3 x Int-score) plus its bonus tricks (at effective druid level 1, that's 1 bonus trick) for free.
- When you later aquire a new companion, either because the previous one died or because you dismissed it, that companion gets only its bonus tricks for free. You have to teach it the tricks it can learn because of Int-score. You are allowed to teach as many tricks per scenario as you have ranks in Handle Animal. Also, for each trick you want to teach, you must succeed at Handle Animal check with the DC listed for the trick you want to teach (a failure counts against the number of tricks you can teach during that scenario).

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Tangential to the main topic, but fun to know:

The in game year on Golarion is 4715 and keeps pace with the real world years. I.e. in 2016 it will be 4716 on Golarion, 1998 was 4698 on Golarion and so forth.

Time is necessarily fuzzy in PFS as you can play scenarios in any order, but I still advance my PFS character's in-game age by one on their birthdays.

[Sebastian Hirsch]

There is a FAQ regarding animal companions.

Essentially the first one comes fully trained, and after that you can try to teach one trick per rank of handle animal. (However you can take 10 on that roll).

[NJHeart2Heart]

Thanks all for the great and timely answers! I'm looking forward to doing more "homework" on my character and her animal today :)

[G-Zeus]

Though you appear to have gotten your answer this is how pfs time was explained to me:
Every scenario is a memory, your character is already retired or dead and you are simply playing the chronicle submitted to the pathfinder society. You play your character because you are reading their chronicle and scenarios are run as written because this is a first hand account of what has happened. You may have played a later season scenario or even a later in season scenario but because this is solely a record of information you may not take previous events knowledge (because you dont know when in your characters life this actually is).

[thejeff]

G-Zeus wrote:

Though you appear to have gotten your answer this is how pfs time was explained to me:

Every scenario is a memory, your character is already retired or dead and you are simply playing the chronicle submitted to the pathfinder society. You play your character because you are reading their chronicle and scenarios are run as written because this is a first hand account of what has happened. You may have played a later season scenario or even a later in season scenario but because this is solely a record of information you may not take previous events knowledge (because you dont know when in your characters life this actually is).

Cute, but doesn't really make sense either. Your character must really experience the scenarios in the order they play them in, because they can use things (boons, items, certainly experience) gained in ones they play earlier in later ones. But the scenarios must occur in order because (some) depend on things that happen in earlier scenarios or contradict later scenarios.

It's best just not to think about it too much. :)

[bdk86]

For the all the paperwork headaches it caused, I actually really liked the Time Unit system in Living Greyhawk for adjudicating how often your PC adventured, did non-adventuring things, etc. But that's just me.

[rknop]

I think the words "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" are best to invoke when thinking about what happens when you go back to an earlier season scenario and get missions from somebody who was already dead or in a very different position as regards the society in a scenario you've already played....

[NJHeart2Heart]

umm... huummana huumaana... I think you lost me in translation there rknop... but then I've gotten great answers already ;)

P.S. I like your kitty :D