Can pregen deaths still be reassigned?

[Michael Hallet]

I'm not concerned about it at all. I'd prefer the rule didn't get changed. I was just pointing out a possibility as to why someone might be concerned. As for abusing GMing, I'm even less concerned about that. Give people incentive to GM.

[TimD]

After some additional thought, I'm also wondering how many people will accidentally apply CORE / Non-CORE #'s because they aren't anticipating this change thereby accidentally forcing campaign changes on other characters, mucking things up further for the already beleaguered tech folks at Paizo.

[KayTei]

As someone who regularly plays pre-gens, it just means I'll end up with 152 million 1xp charas scattered all over. The bookkeeping will probably be a mess. Maybe I'll just start numbering my disposable pre-gen bodies up from 200 and not worry about losing the XP from them. If dying means that I can lose an entire chain of built-up experience that I might want to apply to a concept that I will enjoy playing on the few off-weeks when I'm not either pre-genning or GMing, then I don't see a lot of reason to invest in stacking - I'll just assume any night I'm playing a pre-gen that I plan to write that character off as dead regardless of outcome.

More to the point - we can talk about abuse, but because so many of the pre-gens are under-designed, some of their utility does reside in their disposability. I can play a pre-gen in a group of new players and use it to run sacrifice interference for them, and that's sometimes a critical bridge to both helping them survive and helping them have fun in the early games when they are still figuring out how to play their characters and their characters are still pretty underpowered.

[Ragoz]

I sometimes play pregens for the fun of it. Sometimes I just don't feel like playing my character that day or want a change of pace. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense to bring a mechanically strong character to certain games. The new rule discourages me from bringing the pregen to the table or playing at all.

[nosig]

wow... this change is troubling.

I am due to run 7-98 Serpent's Ire several times at a local Con... Been putting a lot of work into prepping it in style. (I need to get 6 more specials for my 5th star, and was planning to pick up 3 at this Con... now I'm not sure if anyone in their right mind would sign up for the games...) With this change, I am not sure if I want to run this one. I know I am going to have to talk to several people I regularly run for and warn them to put it on brand new PCs. Possibly warn them to avoid it altogether.

"Hay, come sit down at this table and play! Which of your PCs 7, 8 or 9th level would you like to gamble today?"

Yeah - you can go play one of the regular games, or you can come over to my table and get a random PC, and the only thing you'll be risking is... one of your PCs. Yeah - this is going to be great... :-(

[MadScientistWorking]

Thomas Hutchins wrote:

Well I personally feel that all the ACG or Occult are built fine and work well enough. Probably the new base classes too, haven't checked them out.

The first time I looked at the Mesmerist pregen I actually wondered if I was screwing up the rules it was that confusing. On top of that its missing mechanics that actively make it useful as a support character at level 7 (Manifold tricks). Other than that they look fine. I kind of wish the scenario I played the Mesmerist didn't have it die within 5 minutes of starting but that was less the pregen and more the scenarios fault.

[Nefreet]

MadScientistWorking wrote:

I kind of wish the scenario I played the Mesmerist didn't have it die within 5 minutes of starting but that was less the pregen and more the scenarios fault.

I'ma guess the scenario was...:

Elven Entanglement?

[Alanya]

Nefreet wrote:

MadScientistWorking wrote:

I kind of wish the scenario I played the Mesmerist didn't have it die within 5 minutes of starting but that was less the pregen and more the scenarios fault.

** spoiler omitted **

Nope:

Sniper in the Deep, and it was hilarious. And by hilarious I mean that the entire table was in over their heads, and we probably should have TPK'd...

[TimD]

Sin of Asmodeus wrote:

If it's a 7 to 11 I'll be assigning it to their highest level character to enforce this new rule.

So you're so happy, you're willing to do illegal things like assigning to a different character than the one they signed up for because you can?

Interesting.

[Majuba]

I'm fine with this change, and the pregens' quality is really not an issue (except for L4/L7 Harsk, there's just no excuse for him not having Deadly Aim and then Crossbow Mastery).

There does need to be some language in the Serpent's scenarios (and True Dragons if there isn't) just as there is in the Goblins scenarios, to make death an easier recovery. This change seems meant to discourage pregens when you don't *have* to play them.

[technarken]

Or people could just continue building the graveyard of -90+s in ignorance (deliberate or otherwise) of a ruling that serves only to stick it to the people who play pregens: New players and players curious about new material.

[pauljathome]

Sin of Asmodeus wrote:

I'll be asking to see the certs of the character they are assigning the pregen too before mod starts. If it's a 7 to 11 I'll be assigning it to their highest level character to enforce this new rule.

What the heck are you talking about? You most certainly do NOT get to decide which of my characters I'm assigning the pre-gen credit to.

The more I think about this the worse it gets. There is now a very strong incentive to irreversibly assign the pregen credit to a brand new character. Which means MORE people won't care about the result, not less. Which will tend to INCREASE any abusive play that occurs, not reduce it.

[nosig]

I'm sure not playing any more Pregens not assigned to 1st level PCs.

Especially after I have prepped Serpents Ire. Wow...

[MisterSlanky]

Paul Jackson wrote:

[The more I think about this the worse it gets. There is now a very strong incentive to irreversibly assign the pregen credit to a brand new character. Which means MORE people won't care about the result, not less. Which will tend to INCREASE any abusive play that occurs, not reduce it.

Bingo - this was a knee jerk reaction by I'm guessing, a select few that think that everybody is out to "game the system", but fail to remember that they were new players once too.

[Nefreet]

There are several reasons why an experienced player may need to play a Pregen (even in a 7-11):

Their laptop died midgame.

The 1-5 game didn't go off, and they drove an hour to play.

Making a legal table for 2 other players (plus the GM Pregen)

They don't have a 7-11 PC, but want to play with friends that do (which was my first Pregen experience, actually)

And others, however minor they may be.

[Kalindlara]

I've been point #4 there on multiple occasions.

Also,

if they forgot one or more Chronicle sheets for their PC. (Page 4 of the new Guide.)

Also also,

Guide, page 6 wrote:

You must choose to which of your characters the credit will be applied at the beginning of the adventure. Credit from a 1st-level pregenerated character can be applied only to a 1st-level character. Credit for playing higher-level pregenerated characters must be applied to a Roleplaying Guild character of a lower level than the pregenerated character or to a newly created character.

Not only is it completely legal for them to choose to place that 7-11 Chronicle on a lv. 1 PC before playing... it's actually illegal for them to put that 7-11 Chronicle on a 7-11 PC. Your plan violates PFS rules in multiple ways.

Whether it should be that way is open to debate. But until the Guide changes, these are the rules of Pathfinder Society. If this concerns you, I recommend lobbying for a change to the rules - they seem very clear to me. ^_^

[Chess Pwn]

Well, the rule is even if I have 100 characters in level range, I can choose to play a pregen and apply it to any character legal for me to apply it to. That means that if I have a 7-11 character I can play the lv7 pregen and apply it to character 1000 still.

[Kalindlara]

True story: I've been playing since late 2nd Edition, but the idea of organized play always turned me off. When I finally came to PFS, it was a 7-11 that I ended up in (with pregen Seoni). And it was excellent. ^_^

[Exultation]

You know, even if you entirely leave aside the adversarial nature of this rule change, how's it even supposed to work, in practical terms?

One of the most common reasons for playing a pregen is forgetting your character sheet or otherwise leaving it behind. So, suppose a player leaves their character on the kitchen counter and doesn't realize it until they've sat down at the game table. They've got to play a pregen, right? So they play a pregen and put the credit to that character left at home.

Now suppose the pregen dies, or meets some other horrible fate. The player has to spend one or two thousand gold from their own character before they can touch the pregen's stuff.

How are they supposed to record that? How can they even know if the character can afford it? If the character can't, is it even legal to sell things to make up the difference, considering the character isn't actually there?

It seems that the player is essentially required to have his own character sheet with him to resolve everything, which defeats the entire point of playing a pregen when you forget your stuff.

[Nefreet]

The gold spent isn't from the player's actual character.

It couldn't be, for the reasons you describe.

It's from the Chronicle for the game being played.

This is how it worked before, too.

[Zach Davis]

This has been an interesting thread for me to read through, because I was honestly completely unaware of the FAQ allowing you to shift the chronicle to a new character in the first place. I was always under the impression that once I chose which character to assign my pregen credit to that character was the one whose life was on the line, and I was always perfectly ok with that. The risk of character death exists every time you sit at a table whether you use your own character or not, and I believe if you without that risk to your character's life you shouldn't expect to earn any rewards from the chronicle either. A few points to keep in mind:

1. While all the pregens may not be that great you get to choose which one you play. So complaining that you're risking your character's life with a sub-optimal character like level 4 or 7 Harsk really isn't valid since YOU CHOSE to play Harsk when you easily could have played Crowe, Quinn, or any other decently built pregen instead.(Serpents Rise/Ire, True Dragons, and Maelstrom may be the exception to this, however the character's in Serpents Rise and True Dragons were built well enough that I still don't feel its much of an issue.)

2. New player's who die playing a pregen aren't really going to be impacted precisely because they are new players. They can just make a -2 that's an identical clone of the guy who died. Yes they might be bummed if they die, but we are part of a huge community full of amazing people and hopefully the GM and the amazing people that new player is gaming with have explained the campaign to them. That way they know death may happen even in an intro scenario(Ledford and a certain Minotaur spring to mind), and know what their options are afterwards.

3. Even though losing a character sucks remember that you're playing a game, and can have a blast even if you die. As long as every one is trying to make the experience more fun for themselves and the other players a lot of the sting that comes from losing a character can be alleviated. Especially since many people in this awesome community are more than willing to pitch in for raise dead, and if you're playing a pregen you already have half a get out of jail free card since you can sell their stuff for the rez.

4. My fourth point ties into my last statement. You can sell off everything the pregen has at no cost to yourself to buy the raise dead! The campaign leadership has already given us ways to get out of this situation.

Also I just wanted to say I'm sad to hear about your experience with Serpent's Rise Hmm. That scenario was a lot of fun, and it sounds like you said it perfectly when you called it a "perfect storm for a TPK" :( I hope you get to experience it again via Core/GM credit/ star replays so you can get a better experience out of what was really a terrific scenario in my opinion.

All that being said I absolutely can not agree with Sin of Asmodeus's statements. If I show up to a 7-11 scenario with a pregen, and you want to audit me and verify that I'm applying it legally go right ahead, but as Paul said you sure as Hell aren't choosing who I apply my player credit to for me.

Anyway I'm signed up to play Serpent's Ire and Maelstrom in about a month with a two different phenomenal five star GM's slated to run them, and I'm certainly not going to let the risk of character death stop me from enjoying them. I certainly hope people feel the same at GenCon. Good luck with your 10 specials Nosig.

[Exultation]

Nefreet wrote:

The gold spent isn't from the player's actual character.

It couldn't be, for the reasons you describe.

It's from the Chronicle for the game being played.

This is how it worked before, too.

It can't be done, true. Nonetheless it seems to be required:

• The player can use the pregenerated character’s
funds—including selling her gear at half price—to
pay for these spellcasting services. In addition, the
player can contribute the associated Roleplaying Guild
character’s resources (gp and Prestige Points) to this
end. The Roleplaying Guild character must contribute
a minimum amount of gp before spending the
pregenerated character’s wealth in this way, depending
on her level: 0 gp for a 1st-level pregenerated character,
1,000 gp for 4th-level, and 2,000 gp for 7th-level.

[Zach Davis]

Nefreet wrote:

The gold spent isn't from the player's actual character.

It couldn't be, for the reasons you describe.

It's from the Chronicle for the game being played.

This is how it worked before, too.

You spend it out of your earnings from that same scenario.

[Ragoz]

I would think the gold doesn't come from that scenario. It is entirely possible to just die in the first combat and earn nothing and you must still pay the gold.

[thorin001]

Nefreet wrote:

The gold spent isn't from the player's actual character.

It couldn't be, for the reasons you describe.

It's from the Chronicle for the game being played.

This is how it worked before, too.

But it seems to be so:

In addition the player can the associated Roleplaying Guild character's resources (GP and Prestige Points) to this end. The Roleplaying Guild character must contribute a minimum amount of GP before spending the pregenerated character's wealth this way, depending on her level.

It does not mention anything about the chronicle being played. In fact, there is a chance that there will be 0 GP awarded on that chronicle.

[Nefreet]

Zach Davis wrote:

Nefreet wrote:

It's from the Chronicle for the game being played.

You spend it out of your earnings from that same scenario.

Is there a meaningful difference between those two statements?

[thorin001]

Zach Davis wrote:

This has been an interesting thread for me to read through, because I was honestly completely unaware of the FAQ allowing you to shift the chronicle to a new character in the first place. I was always under the impression that once I chose which character to assign my pregen credit to that character was the one whose life was on the line, and I was always perfectly ok with that. The risk of character death exists every time you sit at a table whether you use your own character or not, and I believe if you without that risk to your character's life you shouldn't expect to earn any rewards from the chronicle either. A few points to keep in mind:

1. While all the pregens may not be that great you get to choose which one you play. So complaining that you're risking your character's life with a sub-optimal character like level 4 or 7 Harsk really isn't valid since YOU CHOSE to play Harsk when you easily could have played Crowe, Quinn, or any other decently built pregen instead.(Serpents Rise/Ire, True Dragons, and Maelstrom may be the exception to this, however the character's in Serpents Rise and True Dragons were built well enough that I still don't feel its much of an issue.)

2. New player's who die playing a pregen aren't really going to be impacted precisely because they are new players. They can just make a -2 that's an identical clone of the guy who died. Yes they might be bummed if they die, but we are part of a huge community full of amazing people and hopefully the GM and the amazing people that new player is gaming with have explained the campaign to them. That way they know death may happen even in an intro scenario(Ledford and a certain Minotaur spring to mind), and know what their options are afterwards.

3. Even though losing a character sucks remember that you're playing a game, and can have a blast even if you die. As long as every one is trying to make the experience more fun for themselves and the other players a lot of the sting that comes from losing a character can be alleviated....

None of this applies to Serpent's Rise, Serpent's Ire, any of the Goblin mods, or any other mods that you cannot play your own character in.

[Zach Davis]

Nefreet - Nope. I was just reiterating since it didn't seem like he caught it the first time.

Thorin - True a lot of it doesn't apply to those situations, but I called them out specifically to point out that in my experiences with those scenarios so far the pregens were either built well enough that they aren't really a detriment. With the Goblin mods its really a non-issue since they have specific rules for dealing with deaths. However, as you said you don't have the opportunity to play your own character in these. You know that going in. You choose which pregen you play. You choose to show with enough time to familiarize yourself with your pregen's abilities or you don't. You either choose to accept the risk and play an awesome scenario or you don't. You can totally play a useful pregen, learn that pregen's abilities, and survive these scenarios. Any arguments to the contrary just seem silly. "Oh no. I have to play in scenario designed for pregens? I don't get the rewards on this sheet for zero risk! Gasp! How could they?"

Yes there will be cases where people might have some emergency, and they will get to a table for one of these scenarios and not have time to prepare or get last pick of the pregens. Emergencies will always pop up, but those are corner cases not the norm. Just show up familiarize yourself with your character and have a good time. Or don't. Either way I stated my opinion on this issue. I'm not interested in arguing it further, and while I'm sure I'm in the minority on this I don't really care. I'm just going to go play these scenarios, and have a good time. If my character dies...I'll deal with it. At least I got to play a fun scenario.

[aboyd]

Zach Davis wrote:

I stated my opinion on this issue. I'm not interested in arguing it further, and while I'm sure I'm in the minority on this I don't really care.

It's good to know your position is so unbending, so that everyone knows not to waste time engaging you on it. We can just push past it and engage other people.

So in the interest of engaging other people, my opinion is that a lot of you guys have made some good points. Not only are there modules where you are given minutes to evaluate and learn a pre-gen, but even in games that are not all-pre-gen games, you can have the same issue.

When I first saw the warpriest pre-gen, it was baffling to me. I didn't understand all the swift actions and how fervor affected spells. It is now my favorite pre-gen, but my printed sheet comes with five pages of print-outs from d20pfsrd.com, explaining all the abilities in more detail. It took me over an hour of reading and printing to fully understand how to use that pre-gen.

I just doubt that all players are fully able to handle it well in a pinch or under a short timeline, so I'd be pretty understanding if a pre-gen dies and the player wants options. It's a bummer to see one option being closed off.

However, for me personally, I have a fine coping strategy. I'm already at character #15, so it won't be much of a leap for me to create characters 16 through 25, and just assign a pre-gen to each one as needed.

Unless I'm playing the warpriest. I have confidence in that one. :)

[KayTei]

Respectfully, not everyone wants to move as quickly as possible away from the pre-gens, and I'm not convinced that it's desirable to try to drive movement in that direction.

PFS is specifically set up to accommodate fragmented play, in the sense that the same players and charas are not consistently at the same table. Within that structure, pre-gens are low maintenance, they're easy to run on the fly, and they let me spend my free time on obligations, rather than hobby-tinkering, which is pretty critical for me right now (I have a full time job, a child, and a disability - one night of gaming per week is already a bit of a push). Also, I kind of like the chance to sometimes (when I'm not playing Kyra, which is often) knock around in other corners and get a quick feel for new things.

If PFS is interested in bringing more people in (and it has been, consistently, in my experience), then removing barriers to pre-gen play is exactly the direction I would think you want to go. Not everyone wants to be a min-maxer or a rules lawyer, and pregens are pretty indispensable for those of us with limited time and energy, or who aren't interested in character building, or are still learning the rules, or any of a wide range of other circumstances.

(Acknowledgements, Nefreet, I know you started in this direction, but I think there may be value in laying out the case in more detail.)

[Kurthnaga]

Zach Davis wrote:

Thorin - True a lot of it doesn't apply to those situations, but I called them out specifically to point out that in my experiences with those scenarios so far the pregens were either built well enough that they aren't really a detriment. With the Goblin mods its really a non-issue since they have specific rules for dealing with deaths. However, as you said you don't have the opportunity to play your own character in these. You know that going in. You choose which pregen you play. You choose to show with enough time to familiarize yourself with your pregen's abilities or you don't. You either choose to accept the risk and play an awesome scenario or you don't. You can totally play a useful pregen, learn that pregen's abilities, and survive these scenarios. Any arguments to the contrary just seem silly. "Oh no. I have to play in scenario designed for pregens? I don't get the rewards on this sheet for zero risk! Gasp! How could they?"

This is a terrible, terrible argument. Even if a pregen is "built well enough" to deal with the scenario, which doesn't work as a concept because most pregens are designed to be played in concert with others in these scenarios to cover their weaknesses, there's no way you can always have time to ready yourself for playing a completely new character with such little prep time, particularly during con slots.

During my Serpent's Rise playthrough I went right from GMing a game that ran long because of factors outside my control(players arriving late, players taking awhile during turns to grasp finnicky mass combat rules) into picking up a pregen I'd never seen before of a class I'd hardly even fiddled with conceptually, let alone played in real games. And during that playthrough I actually picked it up fairly quickly and we got through most of it okay, although I was working hard to keep up.

Slight Serpent's Rise spoiler:

But near the end of the scenario I got thrown a curveball and switched to a completely different character. This happens basically immediately before the final battle, I thought it was really cool and wanted to try it out.

But I made a mistake in that final battle due to that spoilered curveball that could have helped out my team a lot. People make mistakes, I had little time to really internalize what the sheet was telling me, and I was tired after working so hard at the con. I was fine with the outcome, my death, but honestly I'm already less likely to try such on the fly weird stuff in the future.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be any risk present in playing pregens, but the idea that you should gamble your real, invested 72+ hours into character in exchange for the chance to play a cool scenario with cool pregens, when you don't have control or a high level of familiarity with the sheet in front of you isn't worth it to me or many people I'm willing to bet.

I loved Serpent's Rise, I'm looking forward to Serpent's Ire this September. But these scenarios and those like them should not punish you for your mistakes as heavily as a normal scenario does. That assertion is faulty in its very premise in my opinion.

[Zach Davis]

You're free to feel that way Kurthnaga. As I said I'm aware I'm in the minority, but I feel the risks should be equal.

[Wei Ji the Learner]

If they're going to make exceptions, then I'd also like a 'no-tax' exception for 'First Run' specials because NO ONE, including writers/GMs knows exactly how they're going to run.

It also would have been horrific if my first experience with PFS play had been 'Serpent's Ire' at PaizoCon for example.

Also, does this mean that the party table should be charged for all the consumables that a pregen has to prevent the "Oh, use the pregen stuff first" mentality that I've seen and have been guilty of myself? since we're going INSANE on trying to ensure that there is never any 'wealth transfer' in any way, shape, or form?

[TOZ's Wandering Eye]

*blink*

[Wei Ji the Learner]

*squint*

[medtec28]

I have been reading through this thread and felt the need to weigh in. From what I understand this has been something a fair number of GM's have been desired by for years now. Others have been pretending it already was a rule(including some VO's whose tables I have played at). Other posts remind me of a style of adversarial GMing that I personally do not care for. No "drinking of the tears of players" for me.

I am distressed to find this after playing Serpents Ire, but now I will be assigning Maelstrom to a character without any experience.

The problem is, with the negative response here, I would be surprised to see Tonya et al make a change. It would look like they are letting us dictate the rules of the campaign. Instead, I have another solution. If you don't like the rule, vote with your feet.

[MisterSlanky]

Sin of Asmodeus wrote:

Play your characters, if you're brand new you shouldn't be playing 7 to 11. Also as a new judge you should. Be bringing new players in and welcoming them.

A serious question - have you ran many game days? Locally this happens regularly. Why? Because if a new player shows up, and there's exactly one seat, that's where they often get seated.

Quote:

So far every arguement is basically boiling down to my character should be immortal and never in teouble.

They just need to change pregen rules to say you must play available characters in the tier of the module. Unless it is a special of some type.

Fixtures. Otherwise. Suck it up buttercup, and either have legitimate characters to assign records too, or be prepared for 1xp 2 prestige and 500ish gold certs for all your ars.

Wow...just wow, I'm literally without words. If you think this is the argument that others are making, you're not reading at all. The argument is that this is exactly the type of knee-jerk reaction of "everybody is out to cheat" that I'm referencing.

[Sin of Asmodeus]

Mister Slanky, I've kept pfs alive in my play area.
I do understand, I've had new players jump in and I've kept kids gloves on, but I've also played where someone has deliberately torpedoed a table with a pregen that died and had zero consequence.
This should be assigned to a character before you start. You don't pay for raise dead at the end of a mod, you pay when you die. If you die with a 7 in the first combat, than you have zero ways to come back short of people at the table bailing you put. With their own wealth because you need to supply 2k gold of your own money and 3k from the pregen.

How is that fair to the rest of the table to pool to fix your pregen who died out if their money, when it's just a throw away 1?
Yes I've already seen someone try to do that at Gen Con.
No I will not allow that to happen in areas I run.

If you have a character in that level range, play that. If you don't, than apply the cert to the next closest level range character. Or just take the cert and apply the 1st level adjustment to it and apply it to a fresh character and be done with it.

[BretI]

Personally, I would be happy with a special exemption that for the pre-gen only adventures (such as Maelstrom) you could assign the character after seeing the sheet. That way you can put it on the character it is most appropriate to.

Seeing how rushed it is after a session, I'm not sure if that is practical.

I haven't seen the disruptive use of pre-gens that others have spoken of. I am not saying it doesn't happen, just that it isn't something I've run across.

I will also have to think much harder on which character to put Maelstrom on.

[MadScientistWorking]

Zach Davis wrote:

1. While all the pregens may not be that great you get to choose which one you play. So complaining that you're risking your character's life with a sub-optimal character like level 4 or 7 Harsk really isn't valid since YOU CHOSE to play Harsk when you easily could have played Crowe, Quinn, or any other decently built pregen instead.(Serpents Rise/Ire, True Dragons, and Maelstrom may be the exception to this, however the character's in Serpents Rise and True Dragons were built well enough that I still don't feel its much of an issue.)

As I said earlier none of the pregens are well built for PFS and admittedly the only way to find out often is to have the pregens smooshed into a fine paste as you struggle through it. Saying play Crowe is hilarious because one of the few times I got incredibly annoyed was at how useless that pregen was.

Quote:

However, as you said you don't have the opportunity to play your own character in these. You know that going in. You choose which pregen you play. You choose to show with enough time to familiarize yourself with your pregen's abilities or you don't. You either choose to accept the risk and play an awesome scenario or you don't. You can totally play a useful pregen, learn that pregen's abilities, and survive these scenarios. Any arguments to the contrary just seem silly. "Oh no. I have to play in scenario designed for pregens? I don't get the rewards on this sheet for zero risk! Gasp! How could they?"

You can't though. I noticed this in We Be Goblins 2 and the Mesmerist but the pregens don't list all of the abilities. Rules as written in regards to the pregens you can't change them.

[bigrig107]

Sin of Asmodeus wrote:

If you have a character in that level range, play that. If you don't, than apply the cert to the next closest level range character. Or just take the cert and apply the 1st level adjustment to it and apply it to a fresh character and be done with it.

Again, you have absolutely zero authority to tell any player who to play, or who to apply a chronicle sheet to.

As an "actually happening" example, there are two scenarios being played today at my local store that I am playing in, one being a 7-11 and the other being a 5-9.
I have both a 7th level character and a 6th level character that could play in each, respectively.
And yet, I'm only going to play the 6th level character. Because the APG iconics are out now, and I want to try one of them out.

As a GM, if I sat at your table and told you that, you would have zero power to tell me to do otherwise. You couldn't force me to play my 7 in the first one, and you certainly couldn't tell me to leave if I didn't do so.

[Hmm]

medtec28 wrote:

I have been reading through this thread and felt the need to weigh in. From what I understand this has been something a fair number of GM's have been desired by for years now. Others have been pretending it already was a rule(including some VO's whose tables I have played at). Other posts remind me of a style of adversarial GMing that I personally do not care for. No "drinking of the tears of players" for me.

I am distressed to find this after playing Serpents Ire, but now I will be assigning Maelstrom to a character without any experience.

The problem is, with the negative response here, I would be surprised to see Tonya et al make a change. It would look like they are letting us dictate the rules of the campaign. Instead, I have another solution. If you don't like the rule, vote with your feet.

Medtec --

May I respectfully disagree here? The campaign triumverate (Tonya, John & Linda) have been very responsive to politely worded and carefully argued player arguments for re-consideration of rules.

Recently, they shifted their stance on the pregen-only requirement in Phantom Phenomena and Silverhex. They heard civil arguments on both sides of the argument, and then they decided for a compromise that was suggested and agreed to by many of the posters in this thread.

They also shifted their stance on sharing the cost for emergency consumables, and have made many other changes. They want their player base to have an excellent gaming experience. They also want their GMs happy, and they want there to be a balanced campaign.

Voting with your feet is not a stance that I would advocate over this issue. Organized play is terrific. It requires many voices and volunteers to keep going. If you want to advocate for change, please... stick around and be a part of it.

Am I unhappy about the new pregen requirement to assign credit at the beginning of the chronicle? Yes. I think that it was an over-reaction based on the anecdotal evidence of how a few problem players have used pregens.

Spoiler:

I am personally a big fan of pregens. I do agree the ones from Serpent's Rise were exceptionally well-built. But in the hands of new players who did not understand them (no one realized that they could heal me of my enfeeblement so their leader was completely unable to lead them in the Boss Fight) we went down HARD. We had several players who had no idea what they could do with their own characters. Once enfeebled, I got to watch us TPK in play-by-post slow motion.

Sometimes teams lose. I get that. I want there to be challenge in my scenarios. My very first scenario was Trial by Machine with my real first level character. We pulled out a victory by the skin of our teeth and with supreme teamwork and cooperation. It was excellent. But that was with characters we knew and understood and had built ourselves.

Please allow the reassignment of chronicles in pregen-only scenarios. Please.

Thank you.
Hmm

[pauljathome]

I have never seen the pregen abuse problem that people allude to. But I accept that others have and that it is a real issue for some areas.

But I don't see how this solves the problem at all.

[TLDR]The ONLY effect of the new rules will be to make things worse[/TLDR]

If I am the kind of player who is going to abuse the pregen then I'm kinda assuming that I
1) don't care about the other players
2) don't care very much about "winning" the scenario

So, with the new rules, I just assign the pregen to my brand new 1st level character. NOTHING HAS CHANGED

But lets assume that I'm now a slightly different person.
1) I don't care about the other players
2) I DO want to get the rewards for playing the scenario

With the old rules, I had an incentive to play the pregen carefully (more likely to get the rewards for the scenario). Now, I have a choice
a) Assign it to a character I care about and play carefully. Again, NOTHING has changed
b) Decide the risk is too high for the reward and apply it to a new character. In which case, I might as well now play abusively.

So, the ONLY change in behaviour that I see this rule change creating is to make some set of players now play more recklessly.

Edit: Rereading the above, I am overstating things a little, making people too binary. There will be people who were planning on playing reasonably carefully who will now play a bit more carefully. But the people who were really abusing things won't change their behaviour and there will definitely be people who will now not care who used to care (because they now choose a new pregen). I believe the latter category will far outweigh the ones who now play a little more carefully

[Hmm]

I agree, Paul!

Hmm

[Pink Dragon]

Another change in behaviour that I see this rule change creating is to make some set of players simply walk away from a table rather than playing a pregen should they have no character of their own that can be used.

[pauljathome]

I'd also like to address the "Well, not all Pregens suck" argument others have used.

1) Very few people bring pregens. So, they generally get to choose from the ones that the organizer brings. As an Organizer, I do NOT bring all 90 odd Pregens to all events. Every now and then I go through and print out more copies of pregens that are missing to replace the ones that went walk about or got written on or got too grubby to use. But I certainly don't do it every week. And I didn't even start from a complete set :-). So, there is not a complete set available.

And I certainly don't have multiples. Not everybody gets to play the L7 Arcanist (which, in fact, I consider SO good that I don't bring it)

2) Even the quite decent pregens generally suffer from a lack of equipment and a narrow focus. This can really hurt in the skill heavy scenarios that we've been seeing a lot of in this season

3) As many people have said, it is the rare player who will play a pregen as competently as they will play their own character. So, the pregens WILL be underplayed to some extent

4) If a character that I built dies because of a flaw in the character build (either a deliberate flaw that I put in or a flaw because I screwed up) then my reaction is pretty much "Fine. My choice/my mistake. I should pay for it". But if my character dies because the pregen doesn't have any way to deal with swarms or because it has a ridiculously low con for its chosen role or for some other reason that seems to me to be basically a badly done pregen then my reaction is pretty much "Darned incompetently built pregen is at fault. That sucks".

Whether that latter is fair or not really doesn't matter. Its a human reaction. I AM going to resent it when what I perceive as an incompetently built pregen dies and MY CHARACTER ends up paying for it.

The Pregens that I've seen for specific scenarios have generally been quite well created. In the hands of an experienced player who understands the class they are fine for the job. Not always, though. The Pregens for Free RPG Day have generally been utterly atrocious for the scenario they're designed to go through.

At level 7 it isn't too bad as I can sell enough stuff so that I'm only paying a small price. At least my actual character is reasonably unlikely to actually lose money (still easily can, of course, since a character dying greatly increases the chance that we won't be getting all the rewards for an adventure). But at lower levels I am very, very likely to be losing money.

This change is a bad idea and I'd like to respectfully ask for it to be changed.

[Davor Firetusk]

I can't say that I have observed pre-gen abuse, but I thought I'd at least add something different to consider. First from a risk reward perspective the new guided added the ability to make Day job checks when playing a pre-gen. Now I don't think Day job checks are game breaking one way or the other, but with a modest investment it does add up to a nice chunk of gold by the end of a characters lifetime.
The other cumulative advantage of playing a pregen is that you get all of those free consumables. Chances of death and condition costs are a part of those consumables. Which is part of the etiquette of being responsible for your own healing. Viewed from that angle the change introduces a more comparable situation in terms of long term resource acquisition and power between playing pre-gens vs. a homemade character. I don't know that that balances the other portions, but it's worth considering.