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Thomas is talking about the core rules.
Determine the average level of your player characters—this is their Average Party Level (APL for short). You should round this value to the nearest whole number (this is one of the few exceptions to the round down rule). Note that these encounter creation guidelines assume a group of four or five PCs. If your group contains six or more players, add one to their average level. If your group contains three or fewer players, subtract one from their average level. For example, if your group consists of six players, two of which are 4th level and four of which are 5th level, their APL is 6th (28 total levels, divided by six players, rounding up, and adding one to the final result).
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Right. In PFS to make things easier, simpler, and clearer they use APL = level/players. Then they use the rounding and subtier calculations to emulate the effect of large parties having a higher APL.
This is why 5-6 players play high and 4 play low in earlier seasons. Because the "phantom" +1 to apl that more people gives. Also why a "problem party" is viewed as supposed to be capable of handling things in high tier.
EDIT:Though it does seem I miss-remembered a little, only 6 is supposed to get the +1.
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Like he (and TOZ) said, Thomas's referring to APL/CR math more generally, not how it's applied to PFS in particular. For my tier 5-9 example from a few pages ago:
tier 5-9, character levels 9/7/6/6/6/6. Average 40/6 = 6.67 = round up to 7. 7 is in-between subtiers, so a party of 6 plays up with the four player adjustment.
The APL according to the Gamemastery Guide would round to 8.
Of course, you have to compare APL with the CR of the encounter, and sometimes the CR listed doesn't seem quite right. The most recent double-rounding experience rknop and I shared had what probably would be considered a CR 11 encounter in tier 5-9--epic for a CR 8 party and maybe a little insane when the encounter is 5 CR higher than 4 of your PCs.
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Right, but that says 6 or more players. PFS currently rounds up with 5 or more players (seasons 4-8). That's where the worst offending corner cases come in. The 4-player adjustment is supposed to compensate for that, but a) The same base game that assumes +1 APL for six or more characters also assumes encounters are designed for 4 characters, and b) the 4-player adjustment often doesn't change the most powerful creature in the encounter significantly, resulting in an encounter that is too powerful for a borderline group.
To put this into an example, a party of 6, 6, 6, 6, 9 has an APL of 6.6. The non-PFS rule quoted would not add +1 to the APL, because there are not 6 players. It would not assume that party could handle a CR 12 or 13 encounter designed for 4 characters. But PFS would round it up to 7, then put them into high tier with the 4-player adjustment, which could result in a CR 12 or 13 encounter designed for 4 players.
The current PFS calculation allows for more powerful encounters than a group would normally face in the base game. Some 5 player borderline groups can handle that, and some can't. That's why a choice is being asked for instead of just asking that the season 4-8 rule be changed to match seasons 0-3 and require 6 players before pushing things to high tier.
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Whoa, whoa...the math says they should be able to be capable?
No, the math will always penalize edge cases by the simple fact of...
1 - 2.49 = Low Tier
2.5 = Pick
2.51 - 5 = High Tier.
Not sure if this was proposed or not but this point here made something stand out. What if we changed this to something like:
1 - 2.49 = Low Tier
2.3 -2. 8 = Pick
2.81 - 5 = High Tier
Or something like that. Where if you are in that low range and going to be forced up by the 'double-rounding problem' you could choose to play down. Call it something like:
If your APL calculations are less then the mid tier point (less than 3 in a 1 - 5 or less than 7 in a 5 - 9 for example) then you have the option to play down if the rounding and number of players would force you up.
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Whoa, whoa...the math says they should be able to be capable?
No, the math will always penalize edge cases by the simple fact of...
1 - 2.49 = Low Tier
2.5 = Pick
2.51 - 5 = High Tier.Not sure if this was proposed or not but this point here made something stand out. What if we changed this to something like:
1 - 2.49 = Low Tier
2.3 -2. 8 = Pick
2.81 - 5 = High TierOr something like that. Where if you are in that low range and going to be forced up by the 'double-rounding problem' you could choose to play down. Call it something like:
If your APL calculations are less then the mid tier point (less than 3 in a 1 - 5 or less than 7 in a 5 - 9 for example) then you have the option to play down if the rounding and number of players would force you up.
I'm a little uneasy about the use of noninteger numbers in an OP environment. Can you explain why you chose the numbers you did instead of something more... integer-based? They don't solve the double-rounding phenomenon.
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The main this is I'm pretty sure they don't want to re-institute choice on this. Either double rounding is okay and nothing changes, or double rounding never happens. SO assuming this is true, what is a proposal for a rule that is easy, and always prevents double rounding?
So, am I reading this correctly to say that you would be ok with the following?
1. Determine APL (sum of character levels / number of characters)
2. If APL < tier midpoint (i.e. 1-5 has tier midpoint 3, 3-7 = 5, 5-9 = 7, 7-11 = 9), then low tier. If APL > tier midpoint, then high tier. If APL = tier midpoint, pick low tier or high tier 4 player adjustment
This removes double rounding by not rounding at all. A party of 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6 = 4.5 = low tier in 3-7, which is likely going to find the scenario easy, but the 3s aren't going to end up getting stomped by CR 8-10 encounters because of double rounding.
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The main this is I'm pretty sure they don't want to re-institute choice on this.Would that really be a bad thing? The problem was people trying to play up for treasure baths. That got a saneification/nerf with the out of subtier gold system.
I don't think it would be a bad thing. In fact, choice is already in the APL/tier calculation.
Example 1:
APL rounds to something.5. In a 5-9 a 6 player APL 5.5 group can choose to round to 5 and play low tier or 6 and play high-tier with the 4-player adjustment. Low tier characters get more gold by playing up, out of tier characters get the same either way, and high-tier characters get less gold by playing down. All characters get access to more items on the chronicle by playing up.
In a 5-9 a 6 player APL 7.5 group can choose to round to 7 and play high-tier 4-player adjustment or round to 8 and play high-tier no adjustment. There is no rewards advantage to playing high-tier with no adjustment in this situation.
Also, there is choice when no characters are in the high-tier, but APL would put the group into the high-tier. In a 5-9, six 7th level characters is APL 7 and would normally play up with the 4-player adjustment. They can choose to play down. Note: The season 8 guide clarified that this rule does apply in Seasons 4-8 scenarios, and not just in seasons 0-3 as the previous rule read. Playing up gets all characters the same gold, but also grants access to additional items.
So choice already exists in the system. The argument against adding choice seems to mainly be that it makes things more complicated, though there are issues of pressuring players to play up. The problem with the second part of that argument is that the current system pressure people to play up already, because it forces it on them. So it's either play up or play a pregen. That's not a better situation in terms of the pressure that it puts on the low-tier player than giving them a choice.
Or is it that people feel like they're going to be pressured to play down?
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@Terminalmancer
I randomly chose those points as an discussion started to illustrate the point. I thought expanded the you pick point slightly, possibly to a few numbers or even to the next integer value as I did in the short description at the end, might suggest another solution to the problem.
In my area we are having the opposite problem, we have enough optimized players that the game becomes way too easy if they are forced down and especially in the early seasons, all it takes is 5 players with 1 7 to bring down a table. So most of these players want to play up rather than down.
I remember one situation where the reverse was true where one player insisted on playing up, forced the table up and contributed less than the lower level characters who barely made it through the adventure, only by using up most of 2 CLW wands.
Like any balancing act we need to address:
1. Everyone gets to Play
2. Everyone gets to Play their character
3. Everyone gets to Play their character in the appropriate tier.
So we go down the line and address these in that order.
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Or is it that people feel like they're going to be pressured to play down?
I feel this if you're actually going to solve the "problem" you need to handle this situation.
example is the 4,4,4,4,7 party. The 7 maybe could play a lower level character or a pregen but decides not to. Then if the vote comes the 7 says, "No I want the gold for in tier". And thus the table is still stuck playing high tier.If the 7 wasn't going to be a team player and play lower level, he might not be a team player and play low tier.
Or one of the 4's might be eyeing the out of tier gold and vote to play high.
because lets do some math estimating. How many tables played are "problem tables" that care about this? Then, how many of those don't have 1 person that would want to play high for the better gold potential? I think adding a unanimous table vote isn't going to help as much as those proposing it think. The players are already choosing to put themselves in the situation, which makes me think that at least 1 of them wants the higher tier for their character.
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As for season 0 - 3 I am not sure how it would change. The difference between them right now is the dividing line not based on level but number of players.
Season 0 - 3 4 - 5 Players, down/ 6 - 7 Player, Up
Season 4 - 8+ 4 Player, down/ 5 - 7 Players, Up
If we expanded choice a bit, then the options to play up or down would only change when you were rounding twice, up to mid tier than up again.
My idea would be to off er the choice that we give to say .5 to anything below the mid tier. So if you are playing a 3 - 7 and get 4.5 you can round up and play up (with either 5 or 6 players depending on season) or round down and play down. If that choice was extended to 4.5-4.9, then more tables can choose.
You could come up with a version for playing up, which would be more appropriate for some areas, but I am focusing now on preventing high level scenarios from killing inappropriate.y tiered players.
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What about instead of playing down, the low tier characters get some sort of buff or "get out of jail free" bonus? Perhaps in exchange for only getting the lower tier rewards? I do not have any specifics in mind at this point.
Hrm. In a way, isn't that what the 4-player adjustment is supposed to be?
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What about instead of playing down, the low tier characters get some sort of buff or "get out of jail free" bonus? Perhaps in exchange for only getting the lower tier rewards? I do not have any specifics in mind at this point.Hrm. In a way, isn't that what the 4-player adjustment is supposed to be?
The main thought here is to add instead of take away. Plus it would be more reliable.
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Or is it that people feel like they're going to be pressured to play down?I feel this if you're actually going to solve the "problem" you need to handle this situation.
example is the 4,4,4,4,7 party. The 7 maybe could play a lower level character or a pregen but decides not to. Then if the vote comes the 7 says, "No I want the gold for in tier". And thus the table is still stuck playing high tier.
If the 7 wasn't going to be a team player and play lower level, he might not be a team player and play low tier.Or one of the 4's might be eyeing the out of tier gold and vote to play high.
because lets do some math estimating. How many tables played are "problem tables" that care about this? Then, how many of those don't have 1 person that would want to play high for the better gold potential? I think adding a unanimous table vote isn't going to help as much as those proposing it think. The players are already choosing to put themselves in the situation, which makes me think that at least 1 of them wants the higher tier for their character.
I never said I wanted a unanimous vote. What's the worst case with a majority vote? You end up in a situation where the level 7 or one or more of the level 4s have to decide whether they want to play their character out of tier, play a pregen, or leave the table... Which is exactly how it works right now. The difference is, currently one player can make that the situation when the majority of the players at the table are against it. A majority vote means, at the very least, if the players who don't want to play a particular tier leave, you still have a table.
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I never said I wanted a unanimous vote. What's the worst case with a majority vote? You end up in a situation where the level 7 or one or more of the level 4s have to decide whether they want to play their character out of tier, play a pregen, or leave the table... Which is exactly how it works right now. The difference is, currently one player can make that the situation when the majority of the players at the table are against it. A majority vote means, at the very least, if the players who don't want to play a particular tier leave, you still have a table.Or is it that people feel like they're going to be pressured to play down?I feel this if you're actually going to solve the "problem" you need to handle this situation.
example is the 4,4,4,4,7 party. The 7 maybe could play a lower level character or a pregen but decides not to. Then if the vote comes the 7 says, "No I want the gold for in tier". And thus the table is still stuck playing high tier.
If the 7 wasn't going to be a team player and play lower level, he might not be a team player and play low tier.Or one of the 4's might be eyeing the out of tier gold and vote to play high.
because lets do some math estimating. How many tables played are "problem tables" that care about this? Then, how many of those don't have 1 person that would want to play high for the better gold potential? I think adding a unanimous table vote isn't going to help as much as those proposing it think. The players are already choosing to put themselves in the situation, which makes me think that at least 1 of them wants the higher tier for their character.
Sorry, it's hard to keep straight exactly what someone has put forth. My most recent memory of a proposition and me asking had them saying that it had to be unanimous.
Just be careful. I can see some people that got outvoted to play low go and sabotage the table. They are probably strong enough to solo, so go and get the low people killed and then finish alone.
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The current rules on rounding when you're at .5 or deciding whether to play up when no one is in tier have no guidelines on how that decision is made, and I have not heard of either of those situations resulting in the type of hard feelings you're describing. It's possible, but it's also possible when there is no choice and someone is playing a pregen up that's tied to an empty character number, because they aren't happy that the one high level character forced them to. I haven't heard of that actually happening either. At some point we just have to trust the players to be adults (at least when they are adults), and for the GM and the event organizer/venture officers to moderate any potentially touchy situations. The current rule removes some of their ability to do that, because it forces things in favor of the more dangerous situation more often than the other direction.
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I think at least from a game balance perspective you would properly compensate the players if the scenario had a total gold amount and total monster exp value. If you took those numbers and divided them evenly to the players it be the ideal reward for each person who participated. The lower level people would level quickly if they took on a big challenge while the higher ones wouldn't because it wasn't.
You could keep scenarios balanced by only designing them for one tier which could be maybe a 3 level spread. It would reduce the effort needed to prepare multiple sub-tiers every scenario too.
It also returns back to a more sensible system which follows the core rules rather than this weird reward system PFS has. Why did more gold and experience appear out of nowhere to accommodate this additional person who joined the table? Why do I level in 3 sessions if the entire scenario only has 1/6th the exp needed to even level?
Anyone looking at this a moment might think that this would somehow create a competitive environment to get into a table; why bring 5 people to split your reward with when you could do it with 4? The answer is pretty simple; scaling the encounter already accommodates the changes.
This isn't a simple solution to implement. It requires a change in the way scenarios are developed. This isn't the first time that has happened though. Honestly it would help us reduce the number of PFS house rules and makes more sense to someone who just played Pathfinder home games. It reduces complexity and returns to the core rules.
All of this is forward thinking though and isn't going to solve the APL calculation happening now. I think it is very important that we remove the ability to vote for tiers to play in. It causes just as much friction as hard mode without the veto power given to any one player.
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It also returns back to a more sensible system which follows the core rules rather than this weird reward system PFS has. Why did more gold and experience appear out of nowhere to accommodate this additional person who joined the table? Why do I level in 3 sessions if the entire scenario only has 1/6th the exp needed to even level?
Because the Society pays each agent that is employed on the mission and levels and XP are a mutable metagame construct.
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It also returns back to a more sensible system which follows the core rules rather than this weird reward system PFS has. Why did more gold and experience appear out of nowhere to accommodate this additional person who joined the table? Why do I level in 3 sessions if the entire scenario only has 1/6th the exp needed to even level?Because the Society pays each agent that is employed on the mission and levels and XP are a mutable metagame construct.
Can you clarify what you are saying for me? Why wouldn't getting an equal portion for your reward make sense and why wouldn't someone get an amount of experience equal to the challenges they actually faced?
In addition anyone can apply normal and slow progression (maybe even fast?) if they want to level at a different rate.
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Can you clarify what you are saying for me?You already get an equal share of the reward for the adventure, as that is what the chronicle gold is. The amount of experience earned is a game construct, and does not need to match exactly to the encounters present.
You definitely don't get an equal share. That's what out of sub-tier gold is. On top of that the gold earned doesn't reflect what was found during the adventure. If you found 4000 gp playing with 4 people and each earned 1000 gp it doesn't make any sense that finding 4000 gp with 5 people gave you each 1000 gp still.
I also think it makes things easier to understand when my game constructs reflect.. the game I'm playing.
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It also returns back to a more sensible system which follows the core rules rather than this weird reward system PFS has. Why did more gold and experience appear out of nowhere to accommodate this additional person who joined the table? Why do I level in 3 sessions if the entire scenario only has 1/6th the exp needed to even level?Because the Society pays each agent that is employed on the mission and levels and XP are a mutable metagame construct.Can you clarify what you are saying for me? Why wouldn't getting an equal portion for your reward make sense and why wouldn't someone get an amount of experience equal to the challenges they actually faced?
In addition anyone can apply normal and slow progression (maybe even fast?) if they want to level at a different rate.
Assuming, for purposes of that idea, we're hand-waving all of the significant problems inherent in rearchitecting the entire organized play environment...
Superficially, it's not entirely unreasonable. But it would seem to incentivize a number of behaviors that have already been identified as bad for organized play, where one of the goals seems to be to encourage diverse groups and the transferrability of characters from one group to another. It would also seem to increase the complexity of playing and GMing in a not-insignificant way and lead to more errors, not just in GMing but also in the writing.
Seems like it would hurt far more than it would help, in my opinion.
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But it would seem to incentivize a number of behaviors that have already been identified as bad for organized play, where one of the goals seems to be to encourage diverse groups and the transferrability of characters from one group to another. It would also seem to increase the complexity of playing and GMing in a not-insignificant way and lead to more errors, not just in GMing but also in the writing.
Is there a reason to think it would encourage a different play-style? You don't get more rewards for having a smaller group because when playing with a different sized group you will have "Scaling the Encounter: For groups with X players apply the advanced template". Having less or more people doesn't impact how much you earn so there is no reason to think there would be elitism.
It also would remove subtier issues (I think this is actually huge. Having multiple subtiers leads to GM errors!) This is a reduction in complexity for GMs. One scenario and one subtier.
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You definitely don't get an equal share.You get paid an equal ammount commiserate to your fame for the job the Society is having you do.
This isn't true either. I could fail all my secondary successes and still get paid the same as anyone who succeeded all their's. They pay you based on the metagame concept of levels.
Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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And if you hadn't been capable? The OP posted after suffering Hrethnar's Throne in a similar fashion.What I'm saying is that the APL that is the "problem case" is set up to succeed. We didn't have any superstar characters, just a bunch of average character. Sure we could have failed. We all knew that it was going to be rough both times doing this. If the one lucky crit we had hadn't happened we'd have probably TPK'd, and been unable to save these characters. Such is this game.
And that herin lies the problem. A bunch of average characters in tier would have trounced that encounter though I would love to see the stats to that encounter given that if it is the encounter Im thinking of....
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This isn't true either.It is true. It just isn't the strict mathematical equation you want it to be.
As great as whatever lore reasons we can think up at some point you need to accept we need a mathematical solution to these problems in an organized play campaign. Our current mathematical formula is why this problem exists.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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This isn't true either. I could fail all my secondary successes and still get paid the same as anyone who succeeded all their's. They pay you based on the metagame concept of levels.You definitely don't get an equal share.You get paid an equal ammount commiserate to your fame for the job the Society is having you do.
Actually, in theory if you botch up the scenario badly enough to loose both secondary success conditions you probably screwed up enough to get 0 gold. Its actually feasible but why the hell would you even want that.
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I think we lost sight of what is going on.
Example Scenario construction:
All scenarios now have the following scaling the encounter:
For 4 players apply the Degenerate Creature (CR -1) template. Rebuild Rules: Ability Scores -4 to all ability scores (minimum 1).
For 5 players run as written.
For 6 players apply the Advanced Creature (CR +1) template. Rebuild Rules: AC increase natural armor by +2; Ability Scores +4 to all ability scores (except Int scores of 2 or less).
Encounter:
4 players fight a CR 7 encounter which awards XP 3,200. 800 each.
5 players fight a CR 8 encounter which awards XP 4,800. 960 each.
6 players fight a CR 9 encounter which awards XP 6,400. 1067 each.
Scenario reward: Each player receives the amount listed on the chronicle where it includes a 4 person, 5 person, and 6 person reward.
This is exactly the same as including 3 different rewards for low tier, out of subtier, and high tier.
By making these changes you have just created a consistent and uniform format between all scenarios. There is no deviation. The templates are the same. Everyone knows scenario 10-01 Torch's Tub rewards 800, 960, or 1067 exp.
It provides a consistent experience every single time. This is a stated goal of the organized play campaign. I think this is the solution.
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Having equal gold for all of the characters is what led to the need to change the system in the first place. When playing up meant getting full high tier gold, there was a lot of pressure to play up, because out of tier characters would either gain or lose a significant amount of gold based on what tier was being played. So an out-of-character abstraction was made to try to equalize the rewards more or less by character level, with a small benefit to low-tier characters playing high tier, and a small penalty to high-tier characters playing low tier in an effort to reduce the need to pressure someone into a particular tier.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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By making these changes you have just created a consistent and uniform format between all scenarios. There is no deviation. The templates are the same. Everyone knows scenario 10-01 Torch's Tub rewards 800, 960, or 1067 exp.
Except you are all ready ignoring and forgetting rules that currently are abstracted to a simple format. For example what happens when you partially complete a scenario? The rules as stated are simple. For you its going to result in this confusing morass.
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Having equal gold for all of the characters is what led to the need to change the system in the first place. When playing up meant getting full high tier gold, there was a lot of pressure to play up, because out of tier characters would either gain or lose a significant amount of gold based on what tier was being played. So an out-of-character abstraction was made to try to equalize the rewards more or less by character level, with a small benefit to low-tier characters playing high tier, and a small penalty to high-tier characters playing low tier in an effort to reduce the need to pressure someone into a particular tier.
This system also solves this though. Because you provide a proportionate amount of gold to the amount of exp it grants there can never be out of subtier hyper-inflated character wealth. Everyone will be perfectly on track for wealth by level unless a scenario is specifically designed to reward more or less than normal.
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Except you are all ready ignoring and forgetting rules that currently are abstracted to a simple format. For example what happens when you partially complete a scenario? The rules as stated are simple. For you its going to result in this confusing morass.By making these changes you have just created a consistent and uniform format between all scenarios. There is no deviation. The templates are the same. Everyone knows scenario 10-01 Torch's Tub rewards 800, 960, or 1067 exp.
There is no more confusion than we currently have. The rules already state what you do when PCs miss a reward; you deduct what wasn't earned. We already have this implemented into the campaign.
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I guess I don't understand the system you're proposing. I see you adjusting based on the number of characters. I don't see you adjusting based on the level of the characters or the APL. What happens to a level 1 character playing in 4-5 with a 5 player group. He's getting the same gold as the high tier character, right?
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Sorry, it wasn't restated in my example but there would only be tiers and not subtiers. One scenario = one tier to prepare = one reward. It reduces GM errors and scenario design errors.
Also you have to remember you don't level just because you played 3 scenarios. A level 6 only gains a fraction of the exp needed of what a level 4 would. This means his gold is going to be perfectly uniform when he does reach 7. He can play many tier 4-6 or less 6-8 because it is more rewarding but will still have level 7 wbl when he gets there.
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Bit of relevant history:
Once upon a time, before the 4 player adjustment, if you had 6 players you got +1 to your APL. If that bumped you into the higher tier, and had no players in that tier you could choose to play down.
The main issue with that is that the last few Guides have been worded so poorly that it says almost the exact opposite of what it means in this regard. Season 8 was the worst, but it is a long term issue.
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Sorry, it wasn't restated in my example but there would only be tiers and not subtiers. One scenario = one tier to prepare = one reward. It reduces GM errors and scenario design errors.
So if the solo tiers have no overlap then level 1 and lv3 are getting the same gold. Both are playing the tier 2 that included +-1. And then will just straight to the teir 5 covering lv4 and 6.
OR
There is overlap. In which case a lv 3 playing tier 2 would get a lot less gold than had he played in tier 4.
both ways have issues with gold.
Not to mention it requires either creating basically duplicate scenarios. (basically printing a current scenario twice, but only the stats for the relevant level but still having them be different numbers so you can play it twice? Or the same number and 2 different versions which puts us to basically what we have now. Gm can say he's running low tier and that he just wont run if it would go to high tier) or creating a lot more scenarios to have them be unique.
Plus we'd need to make sure there was a pregen available for each tier, so that's adding 1 or 2 probably.
And in the end, you've really accomplished... nothing? Or maybe even made things overall worse?
As is there is loads of downtime, between scenarios you've done some boring uneventful work to get the rest of the EXP and gold needed to match what the scenario gave.
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re-institute choiceWould that really be a bad thing? The problem was people trying to play up for treasure baths. That got a saneification/nerf with the out of subtier gold system.
While true, I think the biggest problem is the vocal group of people who didn't like incentivizing "playing up". It presented problems at tables (I've witnessed) where one portion of the table wanted to play up and another down, which resulted in conflict.
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The main issue with that is that the last few Guides have been worded so poorly that it says almost the exact opposite of what it means in this regard. Season 8 was the worst, but it is a long term issue.Bit of relevant history:
Once upon a time, before the 4 player adjustment, if you had 6 players you got +1 to your APL. If that bumped you into the higher tier, and had no players in that tier you could choose to play down.
It's because they have gotten rid of that rule. The last few guide don't want you adding 1 to your APL for larger parties. because it's already figured in by having the scenario be meant for 6 people. if your APL is 6.4 the phantom 1 puts you at 7.4 But at the same time, the phantom +1 has already been baked into the subtier 8-9. That's APL 8-9 of 6, which is really subtier apl 9-10 because it's assuming you have 6 people.
Which is why my biggest view of fixing this problem is to make sure that the 4-player adjustment is effectively lowering the fight enough.
EDIT:
Cause right now a 5-9 has a plan for APL 5-6 which is the 4-player adjustment. A fight for APL 6-7 which is the normal Subtier 5-6. A fight for APL 8-9 for high tier 4 players. And APL 9-10 high tier with 6 players.
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Sorry, it wasn't restated in my example but there would only be tiers and not subtiers. One scenario = one tier to prepare = one reward. It reduces GM errors and scenario design errors.
Also you have to remember you don't level just because you played 3 scenarios. A level 6 only gains a fraction of the exp needed of what a level 4 would. This means his gold is going to be perfectly uniform when he does reach 7. He can play many tier 4-6 or less 6-8 because it is more rewarding but will still have level 7 wbl when he gets there.
My initial thought is that this system throws out many of the things PFS got right. Entirely removing sub tiers is a potential scheduling nightmare. You cut in half the number of scenarios that can be played by any given character in a season. It may simplify things for the GM, and it may simplify encounter design, but it means you need twice as many scenarios (or people playing half as much).
Tracking character advancement now is simple. Even with slow track and modules, the math is still easy to keep track of, and easy to audit. Most of the time you can quickly count chronicles to figure out what level a character is, instead of sitting down with a calculator. If you're trying to plan your convention, you can register for a game you won't qualify for until you gain a level feeling pretty confident that as long as the game you need in order to level doesn't completely fall apart, you'll qualify for the next game. In your system, that is now potentially dependent on how many players show up for the game. Only 4 players? Sorry, looks like you're 100XP short. Your character can't play in the next game.
Regardless of whether the system you're proposing creates a fairer reward system, it would greatly complicate the actual operation of organized play.
That's not even touching on the lack of backward compatibility with existing scenarios. I just don't see it being practical for this organized play organization.
EDIT: Many of my thoughts have been ninja'd. Leaving them to second the thoughts.
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But it would seem to incentivize a number of behaviors that have already been identified as bad for organized play, where one of the goals seems to be to encourage diverse groups and the transferrability of characters from one group to another. It would also seem to increase the complexity of playing and GMing in a not-insignificant way and lead to more errors, not just in GMing but also in the writing.Is there a reason to think it would encourage a different play-style? You don't get more rewards for having a smaller group because when playing with a different sized group you will have "Scaling the Encounter: For groups with X players apply the advanced template". Having less or more people doesn't impact how much you earn so there is no reason to think there would be elitism.
It also would remove subtier issues (I think this is actually huge. Having multiple subtiers leads to GM errors!) This is a reduction in complexity for GMs. One scenario and one subtier.
For example: party of 4 is trying to level their characters up on the way to a particular scenario. They have planned out a number of scenarios they want to play to get there with the characters getting into their desired subtier. Say, a particular Season 4 story arc. Right now, they can ask their venture-person to schedule those scenarios and if they get extra people, great! They already know how much XP they're going to get, they know they're probably going to receive appropriate gold and prestige for each scenario as long as they don't screw too much up. The gold and prestige isn't guaranteed of course, but you have an idea of how it's going to go.
With your proposed change, inviting more people to play reduces gold and experience. They can't predict how much they're going to get. Are they going to be able to get to high subtier? Now, there's an incentive to take the game private instead of public, to make sure that they get the XP they need.
Then take the last part of that particular arc. They've been building up to it, they've got expendable resources for days, they're ready. It ends up on the public schedule and and a new player, not familiar with the scenario, shows up and wants to play. They don't have a character in-tier, so they bring a pregen. They hear the scenario's dangerous, so they assign it to a blank character number. The pregen's only contribution is to get bludgeoned to death by an ankylosaur. But now, because there's an extra person, the other players lose out on gold and experience from this scenario despite having done just about as much work as they would have before. It's a disincentive to invite under-prepared players and/or characters along on adventures where currently, there's no downside to inviting someone along with you on the spur of the moment*.
* there is a downside in some, limited cases--if it changes subtier. But this only seems to happen rarely.
Anyone familiar with MMOs will also recognize "power leveling" behavior, where players with more powerful characters will help a new character by assisting them through more difficult scenarios with the intention of earning the new character more XP than they would ordinarily be able to earn for themselves. I don't know if that is a phenomenon that the leadership is interested in seeing, but I'm pretty sure it's something that would happen. Limited replay rules help a bit here, but how much?
Your argument seems to be premised on the idea that as long as your XP and GP are in sync, the reward is about equal. I don't think that's actually the case, though. People enjoy seeing characters progress, and I've seen very limited use of slow progression (although that may not bear out in every region). I believe that progressing faster down a track, even if that track is the same track you would have progressed down anyway, is still a reward to most players.
So in a broad sense, what your proposal does in my view is significantly change the risk/reward calculation for each additional player over the 4th. Each additional player--particularly if they are lower level, ill-suited for the scenario, etc.--would be able to reduce the risk to the rest of the party by a relatively small amount, while reducing the reward by a proportionally larger amount. That by itself creates incentives to manage the risk/reward balance, which probably means that certain classes of players could be less welcome in certain groups that aggressively manage such things.
In contrast, the current situation--with its largely static rewards--creates a situation where each new player generally reduces risk without reducing the reward, resulting in larger tables and providing an incentive for members of OP to be inclusive and welcoming. Because hey, even if the new person is kind of useless, things aren't getting any worse. You help them out for a session and your characters don't see any long-term negative impacts.
To say nothing of the added complexity involved and all the other factors that I'm willing to hand-wave away.
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So if the solo tiers have no overlap then level 1 and lv3 are getting the same gold. Both are playing the tier 2 that included +-1. And then will just straight to the teir 5 covering lv4 and 6.
I'm sorry I don't understand. Can you explain it again?
With your proposed change, inviting more people to play reduces gold and experience.
It increases it actually. See the example. Everyone is rewarded for having an increasing number of players per game. If you are leveling too fast for your liking play slow track like we do now.