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Looking at the renown rules and I'm working how how usable they would be over the course of a campaign. I comparing it to Rise of the Runelords, although it is certainly not a heavy city based campaign it hopefully would give an idea of how easy it is to qualify for easily becoming well known in cities one adventures in.
The adventure starts in Sandpoint which is a small town with a population of 1,240. A vigilante would be able to gain full renown there at 9th level, else would be able to cover at most a sixth of the community with the fame by the time one leaves. If/when the party comes back later, they would certainly be qualified for renown for the entire town, but there isn't a great amount of benefit at that point in my opinion.
Later on the party goes to Magnimar, a large city with a population of 16,428 where the vigilante would gain full renown at 15th level, the final adventure of the campaign. At the time the party comes here though, the vigilate will not be able to gain renown with a single district of the city. Among their options might be something akin to the short demihuman (dwarves, gnomes, halflings) populace of a single district of the city.
Following that the party visits and hopefully aids a village with a bit more than 400 people. Unfortunately, the party isn't likely 9th level by this point either so the vigilante, even spending a week in the village, wouldn't be able to have renown with the populace.
It is similar for other adventures that come to mind, even those that take place within cities more. Carrion Crown has one running through a variety of cities, but there isn't a point where one can have renown across a city the adventure visits for more than a footnote (with the exception of one, but that likely wouldn't greatly benefit from renown as much as one would hope).
For the vigilante part of the vigilante, this isn't a significant issue. They get the intimidate bonus miles from their selected community, so if they take the time to gain renown with a portion of the city, then their intimidate bonus would apply to anyone that lives inside the city.
However without renown, the social identity gets social grace and that is it. Which feels very very weak from a dual identity character. While there might be more universal talents that benefit the social identity more, each one of those is taking away from the abilities of the part of the vigilante we would be spending a lot more time making d20 rolls with. I feel the social identity needs a better way to represent their renown.
The only AP where you spend a lot of time with a small enough community is skull and shackles, if you count the ship and its crew as a community.
This is also bad for most urban adventures, which would probably start in a metropolis or similarly large environment.
My suggestion for the ability would be to allow an option to affect a certain sized community among a city. For example, when you get renown at 3rd level, allow it to affect a district or neighborhood among the city with around 200 people. This would work out well if the PCs sort of have a go to place for downtime after their adventures.
Like Daredevil is renown in Hell's Kitchen instead of New York City as a whole.
Yes, but Hell's Kitchen alone has a population of 45,000. Well above anything that can be done with renown.
Not sure that's a fair comparison, given that Manhattan has a population of 1.5 million, whereas- say- Korvosa only has a population of 18,000.
Heck, even Absalom, one of the most populous cities on Golarion is only around 300,000 as I recall.
(Community sizes on Golarion relative to RW modern day communities aside, I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more steady progression in the Renown size. The jump from 200 at level 1 to 5,000 at level 9 seems a bit huge, then to 15,000 at level 15. Maybe something a bit more gradual to fill the gaps? As well as a "big" boost/capstone for level 20? Like Lanitril posted above.)
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I am a little curious how much table variation is going to be introduced in PFS as far as district sizes go. If a GM doesn't know the population of a district in Absalom, how big will it end up? It's neither here nor there, and probably not a big deal, I'm just curious.
I wouldn't mind renown being a check based on an Intimidate or Diplomacy result, not unlike rolling profession for a week's worth of earnings. Put some values in a table and scale based on your Intimidate result...
I am a little curious how much table variation is going to be introduced in PFS as far as district sizes go. If a GM doesn't know the population of a district in Absalom, how big will it end up? It's neither here nor there, and probably not a big deal, I'm just curious.
I wouldn't mind renown being a check based on an Intimidate or Diplomacy result, not unlike rolling profession for a week's worth of earnings. Put some values in a table and scale based on your Intimidate result...
That is a bit of a moot point for Absalom with a population of 300,000 and about thirteen districts between them, the bonus one gets at 9th level would only be able to cover a community 1/60th the size of the city. For PFS one is likely to get table variation as time goes on depending on whether a particular GM forgets how many people are in a city, but overall it is a pretty easy answer that you will never qualify for renown anywhere. Cities are too large, parties are much less likely to do social events in towns they vastly out level, and social adventures generally cover a decent amount of communities arbitrarily and do not give the week required to initiate renown.