|
It literally says this in the Starfinder Guide (page 12, under "Creative Solutions"), and basically the same in the Pathfinder Guide (page 13).
"If, for example, your players manage to
roleplay their way through a combat and successfully accomplish
the goal of that encounter without killing the antagonist, give
the PCs the same reward they would have gained had they
defeated their opponent in combat"
and
"If that scene specifically
calls for the PCs to receive a credits reward based on the gear
collected from the defeated combatants, instead allow the PCs
to find a credstick (or something similar) that gives them the
same rewards."
So yeah, if what they did was actually manage an obstacle somehow instead of just I dunno, not doing anything for some reason or actually failing at what they were trying to do (like sneaking, getting caught and running away totally), rewards should be full.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
|
There are a couple of scenarios (mostly old ones) where you have to do things like loot the till of a bar where you happen to fight some ruffians. Those don't sit well with me and I'm inclined to not penalize players when they don't do that random theft. After all, you don't get extra credits for pickpocketing every NPC you run into either. It's both unheroic, and hard to guess which random civilian the author thought you should harass.
Then there's cases like an area with loot that you might not see, like a pit trap with loot at the bottom that you carefully bypass. These are a bit trickier. In a way, Pathfinder due diligence could be thought to include "well, if other people fell for this maybe they left something behind; so instead of falling in, we should peek in".
There's also the occasional case where we investigate an ancient nonevil temple and the scenario expects us to take some relics as treasure. And in other scenarios with similar temples looter PCs get punished for being greedy sacrilegious plunderers. Hard to figure out which is which. In those cases as a GM I'm inclined to hint to players that "it would make sense to take these relics with you for respectful cataloging and study". I don't think players should be punished because authors have different ideas about this.
As for NPCs that you may or may not fight: if you talk your way through instead, that still counts as "winning" the encounter, and you still get treasure. The Guides are clear on this (the "creative solutions clause"). Many scenarios incorporate this with text like "the NPC is impressed and gives you his shiny thing", instead of you taking it from his rapidly cooling corpse. But even if the scenario doesn't come out and state this outright, you get treasure.
|
|
I'm of the opinion that if you used a creative solution and made at least some skill checks with DCs similar to the original ones (say Stealth instead of Perception), you get the rewards. (Unless it goes to weird meta where the players know that they might have to use skills they're not that good at and device the creative solution to get to use the skills they feel better at with the explicit goal of still getting the loot).
If you instead just well, decide not to use your skills at all (like deciding you're in too much of a hurry to use Perception in every room), you do miss out on rewards.
This is just one opinion, really, though. And yeah, most of the time I do get kinda explicit about "no, you really do need to take that with you or you'll lose rewards" to the players if they seem to be missing something. Then they can decide themselves if their characters would actually be greedy/steal/etc. or not. (Like my paladin did refuse to do a faction mission once because it would have required her to make forgeries).
|
|
My interpretation has been that the reduction in gold rewards is intended for if the PCs effectively "fail" that part--
Missing the spot checks or choosing to just not check rooms in a dungeon would count as that, but not looting the guards because you succeeded at Diplomacy would not.
Season 9 seems to be very good about making that clear, "if the PCs did not defeat or effectively bypass" seems to be said a lot in those sections.
The only time as a player I've had rewards reduced the party narrowly lived and didn't kill the Aspis main enemies, so that made sense.
|
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Good reasons for not getting treasure would be:
- Failed the encounter (defeated/fled/truce that allowed enemies to escape)
- Never came near the encounter when you should have (didn't explore the last room in the dungeon)
- Didn't find something/pass the needed skill check to pry it loose (treasure at the bottom of a pit trap).
Bad reason: you had the encounter and "won" it in an alternative way. That's covered by the Creative Solutions clause in the Guide, you should get treasure.
Ugly: you can't decide if you should take the treasure because one writer would punish you for taking it ("sacrilege!") and the other would punish you for not taking it ("explore report and deliver physically to HQ")
