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This faction boon represents your developing initial contacts with the Envoys’ Alliance faction, allowing you to gain Reputation with the faction. While you have this boon slotted, you gain Reputation with the faction after a successfully completed adventure, as detailed in its Primary and Secondary Objectives.
Does this mean that if I'm playing a PC of the Grand Archive, and I slot this boon at the beginning of a scenario featuring the Envoys' Alliance, I can earn reputation and Envoys' Alliance chronicle sheet boons if I complete the E.A.'s mission?
Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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You decide the faction at the end of the briefing (latest) as you slot your boons. You get 1 "champion the faction" boon for free, and others you need to buy with fame. You can only slot one of them per scenario.
Also, so far of the games I've played, I haven't seen a single faction specific boon. Some scenarios give extra reputation to one faction, but all players get that, not just those who are part of that faction for the adventure.
So if you slot your Grand Archive faction boon for the adventure, and it features envoy's alliance, you get your 4 reputation for the adventure to grand archive, and you get 2 extra reputation for Envoy's Alliance, regardless of your current status with them. (This assumes you succeeded in the relevant goals of your mission). If you had slotted your Envoy's Alliance boon instead, you would have gained 4 reputation for envoys alliance for the mission, and then extra 2 for them as well, for a total of 6.
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You decide the faction at the end of the briefing (latest) as you slot your boons. You get 1 "champion the faction" boon for free, and others you need to buy with fame. You can only slot one of them per scenario.
Also, so far of the games I've played, I haven't seen a single faction specific boon. Some scenarios give extra reputation to one faction, but all players get that, not just those who are part of that faction for the adventure.
So if you slot your Grand Archive faction boon for the adventure, and it features envoy's alliance, you get your 4 reputation for the adventure to grand archive, and you get 2 extra reputation for Envoy's Alliance, regardless of your current status with them. (This assumes you succeeded in the relevant goals of your mission). If you had slotted your Envoy's Alliance boon instead, you would have gained 4 reputation for envoys alliance for the mission, and then extra 2 for them as well, for a total of 6.
This makes more sense. I was quite confused how they worked. Thank you!
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Some scenarios give extra reputation to one faction, but all players get that, not just those who are part of that faction for the adventure.There's one exception, and so ever since then I make sure to slot the Faction that the scenario tags.
** spoiler omitted **
That's the scenario I played last night and the main reason I started this thread.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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Indeed, checking the GM thead for that particular scenario And others with similar wordings, it's clear that every character is supposed to get that extra 2 reputation (provided that the party succeeds). In this particular scenario, Linda confirmed that everybody gets it.
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42s73?PFS-104-Bandits-of-Immenwood#36
Edit, Ninja'd by NielsenE
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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Unlike in PFS 1, in PFS 2 your character doesn't really "choose" a faction as their own. You can represent any and all of the factions, just one faction at a time. If you slot your Grand Archive Champion the Faction boon, then your character belongs to the Grand Archive for the duration of that adventure.
You can only slot one faction boon, so you can only represent (belong) to one faction per scenario.
Let's take an example. If you "belong" to the Grand Archive (meaning that you've chosen grand archive's Champion the Faction as your free champion the faction boon) but then use your fame to purchase Champion the Faction for Envoy's Alliance and slot that on your next scenario, you are just as much a member of both the E.A. and the G.A.
As to which faction you want to me a member of for a scenario? That's totally up to you. I'm going to slot Grand Archive for each and every scenario, because I want to reach tier 2 as soon as possible so that I can purchase myself a translator boon (tier 2 G.A. boon) if a mission requires language knowledge. I probably continue to slot G.A. because I also want that capstone of 1 extra pathfinder training point for a new character.
Now, this means that I'll end up getting random +2 reputation for various factions from various scenarios, and those extra reputations don't really do anything for me, because you need 10 reputation for tier 1 rewards.
On the other hand, if I wasn't so interested in the Tier 2 and Tier 4 boons that the G.A. offers, I might have split my focus. I could have slotted G.A. for a scenario that has G.A. tag to get 4+2 =6 reputation for G.A., and then do another scenario for G.A. for a total of 10 reputation, reaching tier 1 and opening up the Off-Hours Study boon.
I could have then switched over to Horizon Hunters with the intention of trying to get to tier 2 boons with them - Horizon Hunters have a Swift Traveler boon which lets you pay 2 fame to get 4 more days of downtime.
Combined with a field commissioned agent, I could have 12+4 =16 days of downtime per scenario, and I could thus reach the required 50 downtime for the Off-Hours study in half the time, effectively learning a new language nearly every level.
I hope that example shows a bit how the system works and what you might achieve with it. In the end, though, which faction you decide to belong to can be different every scenario, and the main difference is that which factions tiered boons you want to reach first.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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So, should I do as Nefreet suggests & slot every Champion the Faction boon that the scenario tags even if my PC is not a member of the tagged faction?
This faction system was first demonstrated in Starfinder, so we can look at how it works there to get some inspiration.
In SFS, too, you don't exclusively belong to one faction. Rather, you have a reputation with each faction, and if your reputation with a faction is high enough, you can get some goodies from them.
By slotting a faction boon, you're basically putting on a t-shirt with a faction logo on it, and if you do well in the scenario, it improves your reputation with that faction.
You start out with one t-shirt (a faction boon for one faction of your choice) but you can buy others too, allowing you to work now for this faction, and next time for that other faction.
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In addition to that, some missions are of special interest to a particular faction. If you do well in that mission, you get a bit of reputation with that faction even if you weren't championing them at the time.
SFS scenarios often include a "this scenario is important to faction X, so encourage players to slot an X faction boon" text. In almost every case, that's been completely pointless because there was no mechanical effect of which faction boon you had slotted.
There are a few exceptions.
There's a scenario where you're told you should consider slotting faction X, and later you meet someone who doesn't like faction Y so if you have Y slotted you take a small penalty.
There's also a scenario where you're told to slot a certain faction, and only if you have that faction slotted can you gain a certain boon. The boon is kinda niche, and only works if you're at least tier 2 in that faction. But I was still annoyed.
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TL;DR - in almost all cases, you can slot any faction and it doesn't matter. If it really matters to slot a particular faction, as a GM you should tell people that because it's kinda pulling the rug out from under people.
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I wish that Translator boon was available to all factions. Languages and the potential for cultural misunderstandings is the thing that most worries me as a player in PF2. It also sounds from the boon text that you can only purchase the Translator boon once... Which I suppose is fair because I'd want to purchase it five or six times, each time to cover a different two common languages. As it is, I am expecting to learn comprehend languages on Pip as soon as I can, and to take multilingual as soon as I can. I am hoping that most PF2 scenario writers understand how difficult it is for players to pick up languages, and provide alternate paths for communication.
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So, should I do as Nefreet suggests & slot every Champion the Faction boon that the scenario tags even if my PC is not a member of the tagged faction?You are limited to slotting only 1 faction boon so you can't do this.
What I mean is if the scenario has a mission/contributes to the Grand Archive, should I slot a G.A. "Champion the Faction" boon? The answer is I probably should.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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What I mean is if the scenario has a mission/contributes to the Grand Archive, should I slot a G.A. "Champion the Faction" boon? The answer is I probably should.So, should I do as Nefreet suggests & slot every Champion the Faction boon that the scenario tags even if my PC is not a member of the tagged faction?You are limited to slotting only 1 faction boon so you can't do this.
Technically speaking, the answer is "it depends on whether you want G.A. reputation or not."
All the adventures I've seen so far, including the one I am prepping right now, give no additional bonus for slotting a specific faction. If you slot G.A., you get 6 G.A. reputation. If you slot E.A., you get 4 E.A. rep + 2 G.A. rep. The total amount of reputation is same, it's just spread to two different factions. If you really want those higher tier E.A. boons, you should slot your E.A. champion the faction.Of course, this may change in the future - it could be that a new scenario gives you a boon for slotting a specific faction.