Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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Last night I played a game where the author made a wrong assumption, and technically voided his own "during combat" tactics. Our GM said this was the case and he used his own tactics from then on. But eventually, morale conditions kicked in and the creature fled, costing us our secondary prestige.
I am not disputing the call the GM made, but I am kinda sour about the interaction between the "during combat" and "morale" condition. Now, there's no direct connection between the one and the other, but IMHO, if the author made a mistake, the players shouldn't be punished for it. I'll be more specific in spoiler tags below.
I just feel that if an author basically voided his own tactics into uselessness, the GM is free to ignore those tactics, and possible morale conditions as well. Technically the morale conditions didn't change because of its incorrect combat tactics, so that's the only point I can bring against my own argument (and it's a weak argument to begin with), but it just felt a bit anticlimactic. I said I'm not necessarily disputing the GM call, and technically the Prestige lost doesn't really matter, but it just feels like a waste.
I've copy-pasted the tactics and morale here, I only formatted for readability:
Before Combat As soon as she detects intruders, the hag turns invisible, then darts about the caverns making subtle scratching noises in order to lure them towards Eya, using her as bait to distract them so she can gain surprise.
During Combat Once the PCs become occupied with Eya, she strikes from behind, biting the nearest opponent, and then unleashes her cold blast special ability. Next, she turns ethereal, uses her sleet storm ability, and if possible, grabs Eya and drags her about the caverns, taunting the PCs and trying to get them to split up in order to attack them individually, alternating between her at-will powers and physical attacks. As she wears down, she eventually drops Eya in another location and then begins stalking the PCs.
Morale If reduced below 20 hit points, the hag turns ethereal (or invisible if she’s lost her heartstone) and attempts to flee.
In the secondary prestige document, it clearly states killing her is the secondary prestige requirement.
Any thoughts on the matter?
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Looks like it’s just one of the secondary success conditions that can be difficult to achieve. Some are much harder than others. Setting aside the wrong assumption in combat, that morale condition means many groups would have trouble getting the secondary point.
But yeah, I can think of several scenarios where the author has confused
Andy: In this scenario the creature has the “variant” descriptor. (AKA: writer fiat.)
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Ah... yeah, and RAW sometimes means you get to run monsters as written, even if written doesn't work by the rules. Its a case of specific trumps general.
Although, in cases such as this, I will likely just ignore that one aspect of the tactics.
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As the GM of that particular session, I shall post my train of thought during that encounter. Not in any kind of defense (as this is just a discussion what to do in such a situation), but more of an insight how I came to the decisions that I made.
Things did go according to plan up until after the Sleet Storm. The PC's were right in her face and she wanted to get out of there.Because she was really pressured, I went for casting Invisibility defensively and moved into my Sleet Storm to later cast Etherealness. Through some sheer luck she managed to remain undetected to pull that off, for her to then move through the walls towards Eya.
When that happened, everything became frustrating. The players had seen her cast Invisibility and most of them had then casted See Invisibility to find her inside the Sleet Storm. They had also spread out to cover more ground. When one of them spotted her, the Force damage dealers moved in to target her, and she was a sitting duck. All she could do was move towards another place in hope to stay away from any force dealer, but she couldn't elude them enough. This caused the shaving of her health, which then triggered the morale condition and she left.
I myself aren't really glad how that turned out. What do other people think, should I have considered a different approach? Or is this really just a frustrating encounter?
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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The rules snafu and the thing that cause the loss of prestige seem almost unrelated.
Yeah, that's what bothers me about it as well. It's pretty much completely unrelated. And I'm bothered by the fact that it bothers me. I really wanna say I'm not bothered by the loss of prestige, but I am. Not because I feel wronged somehow, at least not consciously, but maybe subconsciously.
Anyway, all I wanted to say is, I somehow feel wronged by the scenario, even though I shouldn't be. I just wanted to know if that's rational of me. I just hope that the author's mistake somehow reflects in the solution of the problem he just created. If that makes sense.
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As the GM of that particular session, I shall post my train of thought during that encounter. Not in any kind of defense (as this is just a discussion what to do in such a situation), but more of an insight how I came to the decisions that I made.
** spoiler omitted **
I myself aren't really glad how that turned out. What do other people think, should I have considered a different approach? Or is this really just a frustrating encounter?
Sounds like you did just fine in my opinion.
This is just a really frustrating encounter, because the "get out of jail free card," is one that's really hard to avoid the escape.
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The rules snafu and the thing that cause the loss of prestige seem almost unrelated.Yeah, that's what bothers me about it as well. It's pretty much completely unrelated. And I'm bothered by the fact that it bothers me. I really wanna say I'm not bothered by the loss of prestige, but I am. Not because I feel wronged somehow, at least not consciously, but maybe subconsciously.
Anyway, all I wanted to say is, I somehow feel wronged by the scenario, even though I shouldn't be. I just wanted to know if that's rational of me. I just hope that the author's mistake somehow reflects in the solution of the problem he just created. If that makes sense.
I think the author's mistake has no bearing on the difficulty of getting the second prestige. Fixing tactics to work appropriately to the abilities would have had zero bearing on the creature escaping.
Its just really, really likely, without going from above the morale trigger to dead before they get to act, that they don't get away.
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Keep in mind that when the scenario was written, preventing her from escaping was not the secondary success condition. It might have been someone’s faction mission, and thus still tied to prestige. I don’t remember the faction missions. But the secondary success document did not exist when the scenario was written/released. So it’s not really fair to blame the author for the difficulty of achieving that secondary condition.
Also, as others have said, the author’s rules mistake seems unrelated to failing the secondary condition.
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The rules snafu and the thing that cause the loss of prestige seem almost unrelated.Yeah, that's what bothers me about it as well. It's pretty much completely unrelated. And I'm bothered by the fact that it bothers me. I really wanna say I'm not bothered by the loss of prestige, but I am. Not because I feel wronged somehow, at least not consciously, but maybe subconsciously.
Anyway, all I wanted to say is, I somehow feel wronged by the scenario, even though I shouldn't be. I just wanted to know if that's rational of me. I just hope that the author's mistake somehow reflects in the solution of the problem he just created. If that makes sense.
yeah, I know what you mean.
I recently played a scenario in which I feel we did everything right. Kind of a classic Mission Impossible Trope where the PCs need to slip into a guarded area, free a prisoner - who gives you extra conditions/objectives and so you do those too, and then get away. Because of our PC alignments/Player temperament we tried real hard NOT to murderhobo the mission - and actually got away with it. A near perfect "shadow run"... until we got to the end. We stepped out of character and started to look at the CRs...
Got the boons on the CR (mostly), got 1 XP, 2 PP and... about 1/3 of the gold. We were told that it seems we didn't kill enough of the inhabitants and steal their stuff. (You see, we didn't kill all the guards and loot the place, we actually avoided them if we could...).
As we headed home, most of us just shrugged and congratulated ourselves on a well run caper - and I really wanna say I'm not bothered by the loss of loot, but I am. So I think I know what you mean when you say "Anyway, all I wanted to say is, I somehow feel wronged by the scenario, even though I shouldn't be." Yeah... I'm feeling that too, from a different game.
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Got the boons on the CR (mostly), got 1 XP, 2 PP and... about 1/3 of the gold. We were told that it seems we didn't kill enough of the inhabitants and steal their stuff. (You see, we didn't kill all the guards and loot the place, we actually avoided them if we could...).
Thats not the scenario. The DM is explicitly NOT supposed to do that
da 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.
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I would discuss that with your local venture officer. In general, overcoming an encounter through means other than combat should not cost you gold. I don’t know the specifics or what scenario you were playing, so I can’t comment on if it was handled right in this instance.
That description sounds familiar. I think I also played it recently and a portion of the loot was attached to plundering the home of a third party during a 'rescue' mission. My group tried to complete a 'shadow run' also, luckily a combination of incompetence and division within the group ensured we only lost some of the gold. Maybe I may have missed a subtle detail in the briefing (convention) but we weren't given any hints that we should burglarize the place.
I need to go leave a review for that scenario. I have words for it.
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I would discuss that with your local venture officer. In general, overcoming an encounter through means other than combat should not cost you gold. I don’t know the specifics or what scenario you were playing, so I can’t comment on if it was handled right in this instance.That description sounds familiar. I think I also played it recently and a portion of the loot was attached to plundering the home of a third party during a 'rescue' mission. My group tried to complete a 'shadow run' also, luckily a combination of incompetence and division within the group ensured we only lost some of the gold. Maybe I may have missed a subtle detail in the briefing (convention) but we weren't given any hints that we should burglarize the place.
I need to go leave a review for that scenario. I have words for it.
Yeah, we had a really good party mix for a fast IN and OUT... They almost didn’t know we were there.
But we didn’t steal the silverware - or loot extra rooms - or kill anyone to loot the bodies... so ...
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I suspect I know the scenario as well, though I don't own it, so I can't check the wording on things.
Usually, it will say something like, "If the PCs don't discover the loot, reduce gold by..." So finding the secret stash of loot is enough to get the rewards, and you don't have to actually take it. But I don't know how it is worded in this particular scenario.
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Sounds like there are a several players that were surprised to lose gold on that scenario. I started a discussion regarding this over here.
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Searching is different than looting. If you find the thing, you get the rewards, even if you don’t take the thing.
I can see how the scenario could end up without the party searching everywhere. I don’t remember anything in the briefing that makes searching the whole place something obvious you should do. Since Sir Loin mentioned getting the boons, I’m assuming most of the important places were searched. Again, I don’t have the scenario, so I can’t verify. Anything associated with the guards should have been awarded, I think, as evading them should be as good as defeating them in this situation.
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Searching is different than looting. If you find the thing, you get the rewards, even if you don’t take the thing.
I can see how the scenario could end up without the party searching everywhere. I don’t remember anything in the briefing that makes searching the whole place something obvious you should do. Since Sir Loin mentioned getting the boons, I’m assuming most of the important places were searched. Again, I don’t have the scenario, so I can’t verify. Anything associated with the guards should have been awarded, I think, as evading them should be as good as defeating them in this situation.
This PC had been trying to steal anything not nailed down during the entire RP part of the story up the actual mission. She checked for a cash box at the bar where we started the scenario. But because she did not say "We loot the wine from the cellar" we had GP rewards for that room deducted from our gp award.
Not having read the scenario, I have to assume it has instructions to reduce the gp award if the players don't say "we loot the cellar".
Common practice in PFS games is to assume the PCs loot everything lootable (is "lootable" a real word? well, I guess it is now). This comes from when many players made the move from Home Games where the PCs are the envy of the historical Vandals (scrap the gold leaf off of book inlays - drag everything out of the dungeon to sell for profit, then sell the hole in the ground - twice if not more). We have gotten into the habit of NOT "wasting" valuable game time to say "we loot all the equipment from the bodies and check under the bed for anything valuable". We skip that part of the paperwork/accounting... We teach this to new players, and it is sort of a trademark of a PFS game. Do we need to get out of the habit? has this become a game of "Mother May I?" where "you didn't say you picked up the gold pieces in the room, so I subtracted them from your CR."
Does the scenario in question have instructions that change the standard practice? I mean, more than usual? I can recall several older scenarios that have things like a cash box under the bar that the PCs are assumed to steal... and I normally don't trim the GP award if the PCs don't actually SAY they rob the bar. Heck, in First Steps, the CR lists a scroll of Remove Disease that the PCs can only get from robbing the Orphanage - I have never marked it out, even if the PCs DON'T steal the medicine from the House of Recovery.
But I know that playing Out of Tier in this scenario has a possible gp award of 2,227, and I gained 809, so about 1/3. And I did this while gaining full PP and XP, though we did miss the Chef's boon (I guess we didn't rob the servants/loot their rooms?). But we got the other boons... We actually had a very successful run... except for not stealing/looting our "limit".
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There are definitely a few scenarios out there that seem to encourage murderhoboing rather than avoiding combat where possible. One I played recently had us encounter a creature who was initially unfriendly but had some congruent goals to the PFS agents. We talked our way out of combat and parted amicably, but were later attacked by a hostile creature that was its "friend," and so wound up having to fight both creatures at once. Not cool.