Contributor
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I love this scenario. I love it SO MUCH. Immense kudos to Mr. Greenshields for not only creating a memorable location, but for making it full of life - and unlife!
I did, however, notice something that some PCs are definitely going to enquire about. Sylvina (of Knicks and Knacks, on page 6) knows the (uncommon) consecrate ritual. I know that RAW she only uses it to cleanse the shrine of Urgathoa's influence if she's friendly, but does she potentially teach the PCs the ritual under the same conditions and/or if made helpful? Despite it not being on the Chronicle sheet, I know my PCs would jump at the chance to learn an uncommon mechanic.
Thanks!
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Venture-Lieutenant, Oregon—Portland
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Were maps swapped out or finalized at the last minute for this? B4 is referred to as the "octagonal" keep but it's not octagonal, and B5 isn't on the map at all. Are we just assuming B5 is inside B4 somewhere?
I would create some pieces of ruined keep that we could remove as it gets repaired—making it so they can see a bunch of damage seems more fun that just giving them a list of things they need to fix. But it seems like several of the repairs happen in places not depicted on the map.
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It is an interesting scenario. I did notice that there is no difference in the stat blocks for Encounter C3 between the Skeletal Giants and the Elite Skeletal Giants.
The Elite Skeletal Giants (by the bestiary rules) should be adjusted as follows:
- Increase the creature’s AC, attack modifiers, DCs, saving throws, Perception, and skill modifiers by 2.
- Increase the damage of its Strikes and other offensive abilities by 2.
- Increase the creature’s Hit Points by 15.
Venture-Agent, Colorado—Colorado Springs
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I like the concept of this scenario, but we will see how it runs.
I have the following questions:
1. Do the PCs have to make any checks to know which villagers have which skills, or do they just know?
2. Why does the skeleton soldier on page 20 have an AC of 1?
3. The scenario says to give the PCs handout 3, which tells them there is an Urgathoan Shrine. How would they know that before they have excavated the stairs below the great hall?
I think area B5 should be the structure just north of the barracks that are B4. It meets the description and would overlook the river. and it appears to have a ramp.
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Organized Play Developer
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As GM Erich notes, the elite skeletal giants from the higher subtier for encounter C3 are missing their elite adjustments, so please apply those as described in the elite entry until we get an update pushed.
The skeleton soldier on page 20 should have an AC of 16, not 1.
The PCs should be made aware of each villager's specialty, if any. Whether it's because they support the government and are looking for a chance to inform or because they see the Pathfinders as a route to improving their station, its to the villagers' benefit to let the PCs know what they can do.
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Organized Play Lead Developer
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For the map, the octagonal building on the center west is should be keep (B4), and the wooden building on the east side should be the barracks (B5).
Sylvina doesn't share the consecrate ritual with the PCs. Rituals are a pretty big category of treasure, moreso than an uncommon spell. To offer ritual access as treasure here, we would have had to significantly cut into the other rewards the scenario offered or charge a fee that was beyond the means of 1st level PCs, which wouldn't have been appealing to PCs who didn't want the ritual.
Of course, people running this adventure for their home games are welcome to add it in here :)
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This scenario looks so great. But it really takes some extra preparation. Just finished some 17 tokens/characters for the NPCs.
Locations: They are given for each NPC as B1 .. B7 and early on I thought they are where they defend. Took me until the end to realize it is A1 to A7 where they are in town and defence / death of villagers is just done via preparations (or lack thereof)
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Venture-Captain, Texas—Austin
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For the tasks that cost no gold, does that mean its a PC working on it by themselves, or that the NPC's are helping free of charge? Cleaning any room or Excavating the stairs are the relevant ones since the sidebar on says that they can hire NPC's for 3gp, but the activity it self says it does not cost anything.
This is important because if cleaning costs gold, then the PC's will run out of gold before getting to everything, unless they pitch in their own wealth. Then my next question becomes how much progress do they make on their own and does this impact their treasure at the end?
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Venture-Lieutenant, Oregon—Portland
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This is important because if cleaning costs gold, then the PC's will run out of gold before getting to everything, unless they pitch in their own wealth. Then my next question becomes how much progress do they make on their own and does this impact their treasure at the end?
I don't think it's possible to run out of gold.
As I read it, the most they could spend on NPCs is 84 gp if they hired extra help every day. The sidebar says it costs 3 gp per day to hire 3 villagers per PC; a standard table would get 12 villagers each day for 3 gp.
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Venture-Captain, Vermont—Peacham
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This is important because if cleaning costs gold, then the PC's will run out of gold before getting to everything, unless they pitch in their own wealth. Then my next question becomes how much progress do they make on their own and does this impact their treasure at the end?I don't think it's possible to run out of gold.
As I read it, the most they could spend on NPCs is 84 gp if they hired extra help every day. The sidebar says it costs 3 gp per day to hire 3 villagers per PC; a standard table would get 12 villagers each day for 3 gp.
If they hire 12 villagers a day wouldn’t that cost 12 gp per day instead of 3? After only 12 days, they would spend 144 gold and nearly be out of money.
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The Rebuilding Fort Agate is a nice activity and a break from normal play - but it needs good preparation.
About money / running out:
Total 162 days to do everything
40 gold needed if you clean up the shrine
I allowed the group to pay the 3 gp for the refugees from the boat as they tried to hire them for later - too bad they were moved on. The group couldn't know that they would not be available.
That leaves 107 or 110 gold.
Assuming that failures and criticals even out this results in:
35 x 4 days for 140 days and 2 gold left
36 x 4 days for 144 days and 2 gold left
This would take a group of 4 a total of 9 days to burn through all the money.
Open questions: Can you hire less then 4 NPCs? The going rate seems 1 gold per day per worker. Can you 'pair up' and hire just 1 worker for a total of 2 days. I would go with yes (you can't work with >3 but with less).
Can they work on their own. Again I assume yes - they just get 1 day worth of work done.
What happens on crit success / success / failure / crit failure if you don't have 4 people (1 + 3 NPC) working. Crit seems 150%, success 1 day per worker/character, failure 50%, crit failure - nothing. I assume we just do the same and round down.
I really look forward to GM this a second time.
One last bit of Maths:
4 players is 4 x 27 days working, 5 is 5 x 22 and 6 is 6 x 18 for 108, 110, 108 decisions to be made which character is doing what, which NPC they hire, etc.
Prepare how to keep track of progress for each activity, days, has each player acted in a day, which NPC works with which character, how helpful/hostile are these characters
You have approx less then 1 minute real time per player/character to get a decision and to do the bookkeeping. Otherwise this activity alone will run for > 2 hours. Keep in mind on a VTT that also the players need to be able to keep track.
What I did on roll20: I had 17 NPC tokens - they all where there as a reminder whom they can use. I used colour markers to track unfriendly -> helpful. I had a progress token for each activity where the players could add days worked (like a reverse HP bar - just that they started at zero and had to get it to max). I had one player add a cross for each finished activity.
I still overran / nearly lost track of days / couldn't tell with 100% that every single player had done each days activity / that none had done a day twice.
I will add some improvements - especially a clearer layout / using the initiative tracker for each day to ensure work is done in chunks of single days / everyone contributed.
Chunking 2 days doing x and finish is looks good to save time but yields chaos in book-keeping.
I will share once I have set it up how I do it.
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I played at Thod's table and he had some great ideas on how to handle this on a VTT but it is an extreme amount of bookkeeping. I just saw the NPC tracker in the scenario and I am more impressed now. The biggest hiccup for us was in how the tasks were arrayed. I think they need to be ordered in groups more clearly based on the requirements to complete, skills needed, and location. It can be a lot to take in on one screen and you run the risk in info overload. I will be GMing this on Sunday and will report back with anything else I think of.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Oregon—Portland
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If they hire 12 villagers a day wouldn’t that cost 12 gp per day instead of 3? After only 12 days, they would spend 144 gold and nearly be out of money.As I read it, it says " It costs 3 gp per day to hire 3 villagers per PC from Prophet’s Rest to put in a full day’s work". To me that says that it costs 3 gp a day, and for that you can hire 3 villagers per PC, or each PC can hire 3 villagers. So for a table of 6 players, you get a real bargain, as you can hire 18 of the 27 villagers for only 3gp that day.
That’s exactly how I read it. It does not say it costs 3 gp per PC/day — it says it’s 3 gp a day to hire X villagers, where X is a function of how many PCs are present.
I don’t think it makes sense any other way, since the scenario doesn’t adjust the amount of gold based on table size. So you’d have a shortened timeframe based on table size AND less gold to go around if each PC had to pay 3 gp for 3 villagers.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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We played it with 1GP per villager hired per day, and each PC can lead at most 3 villagers. We were able to complete the repairs in 12 days due to a lot of crits on Crafting checks, but we did burn through all of the gold so lost out on three treasure bundles.
I don't think we overspent, we did about half of the cleaning ourselves and were forced to hire people for the crafting because at level 1-2, Expert in crafting is not something a lot of people will have.
So given that 30% of your reward is based on having leftover gold, and we actually saved a lot of gold through lucky crits... maybe the 1GP for 3 villagers for a day is actually more reasonable. The 40GP for the cleaning of the shrine is still gonna hit hard.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16
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In Appendix 3, it lists the Hengus couple as both.... trapmakers? Was this intentional, or a goof? They're blacksmiths according to their description, but then again, the scenario doesn't call for needing any blacksmiths (though you'd think that would be a reasonable thing to need for things like repairing a gate). As it is, you wind up with four available trapmakers, way more than any other profession. Seems like a misprint, but what do I know.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16
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Just finished running and had a good time overall, but I think the language clarifying the gold per day per pc, etc, really does need cleaning up. I did wind up running with the idea that 3 GP gets you enough villagers for every PC to have 3, which doesn't seem realistic (and they finished in nine days thanks to overall decent rolls and no crit failures), but the other ways seem absolutely brutal on your treasure rewards, so, if the assumption is that this will probably cut into PC gold at the majority of tables, it'd be nice to have a short line saying so so it's not making people wonder if they're misunderstanding a rule.
Total game time was about 5 hours and 15 minutes. A little long, but not disastrously so if considering 5 hour slots. If considering four hours, oy vey.
A massive thanks to Thod for allowing me the benefit of his prepped roll20 table, it was a humongous help.
I did take the liberty of "covering up" the locked repair tasks until they had been enabled, which at least helped break up some of the possible tedium in that section because uncovering them as they were revealed helped contribute to a sense of "progress" for the party, I think.
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Going to be running this tomorrow for my group and trying to fit it into a 4 hour time slot. I ended up spending a fair amount of time making spoiler-free handouts to help streamline the fort reconstruction and NPC interaction section.
I'm happy to share it - the format is google slides. Link to slides.
Edit - minor clarification: the blacksmiths are listed as "blacksmith" because 4 "trapmakers" would be a little suspicious for my players. They function as trapmakers in the final day, as written.
Also, I interpreted the Tower Demolishing activity as required to get stone for other projects. I know the PCs have access to unlimited lumber, but this was the only listed source for stone.
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Going to be running this tomorrow for my group and trying to fit it into a 4 hour time slot. I ended up spending a fair amount of time making spoiler-free handouts to help streamline the fort reconstruction and NPC interaction section.
I'm happy to share it - the format is google slides. Link to slides.
Edit - minor clarification: the blacksmiths are listed as "blacksmith" because 4 "trapmakers" would be a little suspicious for my players. They function as trapmakers in the final day, as written.
Also, I interpreted the Tower Demolishing activity as required to get stone for other projects. I know the PCs have access to unlimited lumber, but this was the only listed source for stone.
I posted this on PFSPrep for you too, and converted the flowcharts to Roll20-friendly assets so GMs can use them on either platform. This will save my table a lot of time and confusion. Thank you!
Side note: I'm seriously wondering how GMs are expected to get this done in a 4-hour time slot. Combat can take longer in 2e; at the very least, encounters such as the Midges should be clearly labeled as optional.
Overall, this looks like a fun scenario but it would better fit in a 6-hour slot.
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Organized Play Developer
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Does secretly planting whisper lilies offer any benefit in this scenario other than the GM checking box B? I am not seeing any mechanical advantage or reward, but it sure seems like an important job to get done.
They don't affect the outcome of this scenario, but the reporting data will directly influence future adventures and storylines related to Razmiran and the lodge.
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A question:
How much money do they need to have left for the 3 treasure bundles. My second group had a single gp left.
I did 2 blog posts - one describing how I converted it to roll20 - a follow on how it went afterwards
Doing a skill challenge on roll20
Doing a skill challenge on roll20 - Part 2
Part 2 contains some advice how I would do it better next time. Yes - I signed up twice to run this during PaizoCon.
Venture-Agent, Finland—Tampere
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Have to say that I find it bit confusing that PCs do "multiple days worth of work" in one day unless I misunderstood something. Like crit failure is no progress at all, but even with failure its two days worth of progress in single day. I do get its its to represent characters having 3 hired npcs to help them, but I do kinda wish there was other term for it than "how many days worth of days you do in single day"
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Have to say that I find it bit confusing that PCs do "multiple days worth of work" in one day unless I misunderstood something. Like crit failure is no progress at all, but even with failure its two days worth of progress in single day. I do get its its to represent characters having 3 hired npcs to help them, but I do kinda wish there was other term for it than "how many days worth of days you do in single day"
Yeah, the term "days worked" can be confusing. I chose to use the hyphenated term "work-days" when explaining it to players. I said something like "Work-days (hyphenated) is similar to the concept of 'man-hours' on a construction site, which is the amount of work performed by the average person in one hour. In this case, work-days are the average amount of work done by the average person in 8 hours."
Players seemed to get it when I explained tasks using this term; e.g. "clearing the rubble takes 8 work-days."
I did 2 blog posts - one describing how I converted it to roll20 - a follow on how it went afterwards
Doing a skill challenge on roll20
Doing a skill challenge on roll20 - Part 2
Part 2 contains some advice how I would do it better next time. Yes - I signed up twice to run this during PaizoCon.
Thod this is great! It's really great for people learning roll20, and refining the tools they have as a GM. I would like to point out that as a badly colorblind person, I have had lots of accessibility issues in the VTT environment lately. Many players on google slides use red/green borders to color-code enemies, etc. In this case, you might also want to either consider a symbol for attitude (supplementing the existing color scheme), or choose colors with more contrast and thicker rings.
My own setup in roll20 for just used a table and markers for tracking attitude.
For the tasks, we used iosokine's flowchart with color-coded by task training level and checkmarks. The big boxes, while still color-coded, also contain a textual designation of the task training level as well. This makes them accessible for those with vision problems like myself, allowing the colors to supplement for other users.
Another thing I did was add rubble tokens on the map tactical where repairs were needed, and players got to uncover it as they achieved tasks. This helped them visualize progress and there are lots of free rubble tokens in roll20.
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If they hire 12 villagers a day wouldn’t that cost 12 gp per day instead of 3? After only 12 days, they would spend 144 gold and nearly be out of money.As I read it, it says " It costs 3 gp per day to hire 3 villagers per PC from Prophet’s Rest to put in a full day’s work". To me that says that it costs 3 gp a day, and for that you can hire 3 villagers per PC, or each PC can hire 3 villagers. So for a table of 6 players, you get a real bargain, as you can hire 18 of the 27 villagers for only 3gp that day.That’s exactly how I read it. It does not say it costs 3 gp per PC/day — it says it’s 3 gp a day to hire X villagers, where X is a function of how many PCs are present.
I don’t think it makes sense any other way, since the scenario doesn’t adjust the amount of gold based on table size. So you’d have a shortened timeframe based on table size AND less gold to go around if each PC had to pay 3 gp for 3 villagers.
That is exactly as I read it as well. You spend 3gp and get up to 3 times the # of PC's to work for you. The only time you will be shortchanged is if one or more PC's "take the day off" to schmooze with the locals or plant the lilies. So if I have a table of 5 PCs, on day one they hire a total of 15 workers for 3gp. On day two one of my PCs decides to go plant flowers so they are only able to hire 12 PCs for that same 3 gp cost. This doesn't make any sense, but I guess it keeps the math simple and keeps PC costs down.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Oregon—Portland
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Have to say that I find it bit confusing that PCs do "multiple days worth of work" in one day unless I misunderstood something. Like crit failure is no progress at all, but even with failure its two days worth of progress in single day.
It's person/days. Each PC and NPC can typically perform 1 day of work, so 4 person/days per PC team. If they fail their check, the team is very inefficient and progresses as half that rate. So as a team, they only put in 2 person/days rather than 4. A critical success and they burn through their work, achieving twice the normal work for 8 person/days.
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Players seemed to get it when I explained tasks using this term; e.g. "clearing the rubble takes 8 work-days."
Someone used the term "FTE" which caused me to LOL.
Perhaps it was a function of my job (which involves terms like FTE-months), but I found it super clear. I was relieved that there wasn't a premium rate for hiring the skilled workers!
I'm definitely loading this one in the hopper to GM. Thanks, Doug!
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Players seemed to get it when I explained tasks using this term; e.g. "clearing the rubble takes 8 work-days."Someone used the term "FTE" which caused me to LOL.
Perhaps it was a function of my job (which involves terms like FTE-months), but I found it super clear. I was relieved that there wasn't a premium rate for hiring the skilled workers!
I'm definitely loading this one in the hopper to GM. Thanks, Doug!
I was surprised too about there not being an extra charge for the skilled workers. I guess Razmir is not a supporter of labor unions.
Designer
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I ran this last night for my regular society group, and just a few thoughts -
1) Make sure you budget extra time for the scenario (it took us around 6.5 hours to complete).
2) Definity have a resource for your players to see the checks, it definitely speeds things up. I used a google doc where they could write in what they were doing and with who, as well as track their progress.
3) Even though it runs long, this is a very interesting scenario and definitely worth the time.
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Here's something else I just thought of as I'm going through prep work the night before I'm scheduled to run. The Consecrate ritual requires two additional worshippers of the consecrator's faith to make crafting or performance checks. What exactly are the PC's to do if there are not at least two of them who are worshippers of Hanspur? As I'm sure Sylvina is the only worshipper of Hanspur (or the only one willing to admit it) in Prophet's Rest. Or is this being handwaved? Or am I missing something?
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A couple of questions on how people are interpreting some of the rebuild activities:
A number of tasks (notably the ones that don't allow for a skill check) say "nor does it require gold". I think this is left over from some previous version, as only one task required gold (cleanse the shrine). All tasks requirement payment of the workers, I don't think the cleaning tasks skip that, with that wording.
Collapse the Watchtower is listed as providing stone for all the stone tasks, but none of the stone tasks list requiring stone nor do they list the task as a pre-req. Should it be considered a pre-req?
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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This will definitely run long. It has, in effect, 5 combat encounters, potential for some RP (with the arrival, with the villagers, with the razmirans), requires time for PC planning (who does what when and how to plan the defense).
It took our group 8 hours.
It's a very good scenario otherwise, and we really loved it. Special thanks to Thod who let our GM use his table!
It makes little sense that the rate would be "with 3gp, you get as many NPC's as you want, maximum of 3 per PC" but with "it costs 3gp per pc to gain 3 NPC's" the group -will- run out of gold, which makes the end "keep leftover gold as 3 TB" weird - there is no gold left over unless the PC's somehow know this beforehand, they are very much able to spend all of it.
Given that the group has 150gp, the ritual takes 40, and the refugees take 10, that leaves 100gp. at 3 gp per day that is a bit more than 33 days, so enough gold for "roughly a month", and given that the scenario isn't longer than a month, there would be some gold left over to represent those 3 TB's. Since there's no treshold on "How much GP needs to be left over to earn those 3 TB's" I'd suggest using this (3gp per day, regardless of number of NPC's) to make the scenario run smooth and logical, but I'd really want to hear dev input on how the economics are actually supposed to work out.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Oregon—Portland
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It makes little sense that the rate would be "with 3gp, you get as many NPC's as you want, maximum of 3 per PC"
I think it makes sense when viewed from the perspective of a game that needs to scale based on a variable number of players. The scenario reduces the number of days available for larger tables, so it seems to be anticipating that resources increase based on the number of players.
I think the author had to either vary the number of NPCs the PCs get for 3 gp, or vary the amount of gold given to the party based on party size.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Oregon—Portland
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Since there is a time frame listed, I'd use the same rules as all the other downtime activities.
They'd make a check at the end of the first day. It doesn't limit the number of people who can participate. So 4 people would accomplish 4 person-days. Critical success means they complete 6 person-days, cleansing the shrine in one day. Success is 4, failure is 2, critical failure is no progress on the cleansing.
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Venture-Captain, Vermont—Peacham
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Tom, I think your approach works better for this adventure, but I’m wondering about the intent of the developers and what creates a better story. Here is the table for consecrate on page 411 of the Core Rulebook. I would hate for the players to critically fail. One bad roll could last an entire year!
Critical Success:The consecration succeeds, and it either lasts for 10 years instead of 1 or covers an area with twice the radius. Occasionally, with your deity's favor, this might produce an even more amazing effect, such as a permanently consecrated area or the effect covering an entire cathedral.
Success:The consecration succeeds.
Failure:The consecration fails.
Critical Failure: The consecration fails spectacularly and angers your deity, who sends a sign of displeasure. For at least 1 year, further attempts to consecrate the site fail.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Oregon—Portland
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As the consecrate ritual RAW, requires two other worshipers of the same deity as the leader, pretty sure they aren't using its rules, and just going with the same as the other downtime tasks in the module (as Tom suggests). Otherwise its impossible if Sylvina leads it.
Yes, I feel like the cleansing described in the scenario is more consecrate ritual-adjacent. The time to complete the cleansing isn't the same as the RAW ritual. The sentence "Note that if Sylvina performs the ritual, she can only consecrate the shrine to Hanspur" implies that a single person can do the cleanse. There is no counteract check required.
And from a practical standpoint, this seems virtually impossible to complete otherwise. I'd love to hear from one of the developers, because it seems very unlikely that a random PFS group will have the required number of worshippers of the same deity to meet the RAW ritual requirements.
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Venture-Captain, Missouri—Columbia
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This should either have been trimmed down to be one normal sized scenario or increased to be two scenarios. The only way to fit it into a four hour block is to cut stuff out which kind of ruins the fun of the story. I actually found it to be fun to GM. It's got a lot of room for a GM to provide personality to the NPCs and of course, that means roleplay opportunities for the players. But that also means using time.
Overall, I liked this adventure. I prepared for it to go long, so that wasn't an issue for me, but this will need some work to fit it into PaizoCon.
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Overall, I liked this adventure. I prepared for it to go long, so that wasn't an issue for me, but this will need some work to fit it into PaizoCon.
The only way I was able to get it down to that amount of time was skipping past roleplay in the town straight into the downtime section, providing only a brief explanation of each NPC. I'd do that as a handout if I were to run it again. I also organized all of the tasks so that it was clear what expertise was needed for each one and what order they needed done. Some good channel rolls and having an out of tier barbarian also helped things.
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Venture-Captain, Vermont—Peacham
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I ran this last night and had a great time. I ran over at around 5 hours. I am running this repeatedly at PaizoCon and now I’m trying to figure out how to trim the time back to four hours and keep all of the fun bits. I could skip the battle of the midges but it is useful around that point to have a small combat to break up the downtime activities.
The other place I keep coming to is the repair of the keep. It is a great series of checks and the players loved it. I also used the ideas found in this thread and built a great page on my Roll20 session where I made a token for every downtime activity. Players are moving up bars on those tokens as days of work get accomplished and skill checks are made. It’s great fun. However, the players were way ahead of schedule and did not have any fear of running out of gold. In the end, I’m wondering if they can fail. I’m wondering if knowing that I can speed this section up so we can get on with the finale.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Oregon—Portland
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However, the players were way ahead of schedule and did not have any fear of running out of gold. In the end, I’m wondering if they can fail.
I really think it's designed so that it's hard for them to fail. Left over gold represents 30% of the total gold that I typically see in scenarios. I would think it should be unusual that the party misses out on 3 of 10 treasure bundles.
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Venture-Agent, Online—VTT
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When I ran this the other day, I had to basically summarize past all of the great role playing opportunity of the village in order to only go long by 1 hour. There's a lot of fun to be had with this scenario, but I have no idea how anyone is supposed even attempt to run it in the time frame of a normal society scenario. Convention slots, or retail venues with a set closing hour (when they become relevant again) will have serious problems.
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Venture-Captain, Vermont—Peacham
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The group of 6 I ran it for had 4 gp left in 11 days work having made a decision to avoid hiring workers for some of the last few days. It seems like it can run close, but should still be doable.
Nathan, how much were you charging? 3 gp per day or 3 gp per person each day?
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I've run it twice now.
Once with the 3gp/day (total across all PCs) that PCs hire villages (one of the interpretations discussed here) and once with the effectively 1gp/day/villager hired.
With the former approach, its very hard to run out of money and feels like its an extra level of accounting in a busy scenario that doesn't influence anything.
With the latter approach its almost too easy to run out of money. Losing 3 treasure bundles for spending everything feels a little gotcha.
The latter approach feels like it makes tracking gold important/valuable so its likely what was intended.
But it needs a couple more rules IMO:
1) the PCs need advance notice having some left over money is important. Maybe Smine has to mention, that some funds should be left over for emergencies/routine upkeep, and then decides to change that to a reward.
2) Explicit rules for having PCs take the place of villages (ie at a 6 player table, have 2 PCs hire teams, and have the other four PCs form their own group (no charge). PCs will likely need to save money by not always hiring. Some GMs I've talked to allow this implicitly, some disallow it.
3) Rules for using smaller than teams of 4 -- if because of critical success, or regular failures you only have two days of work remaining on a task, can you hire a single village (possibly the one with the skill needed) to finish the job, or do you still need to hire a full team of 4 and overpay. If you can hire a team of two and get half the values listed for progress, that helps a lot.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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The wording doesn't say anything about withelding those 3 bundles if PC's spent all money. There's no "IF PC's have any gold left, they gain 3 treasure bundles" or any other tresholds for the bundles. PC's also have no way of knowing they are supposed to have gold left. Until/unless we have an official response, I would strongly advice against denying PC's treasure for spending all the gold, firstly because the reasons above and secondly because the cost of hiring villagers is unclear (3gp per day vs 1gp per villager).
It's really s&*@ty for the Players if it turns out that their GM both had them spend more than was meant to AND penalized them TB's despite the unclear language, so I would lean on the side of caution and just give them the 3 bundles.
Also, what would be the treshhold for losing the TB's? 1 gold? 1 gold surely isn't worth 3 TB's. Or what if the PC's spend everything except 1 copper, is that still 3 bundles?
If we're supposed to be removing the bundles, there would/should be a clear indiciation ("unless the PC's spent all the gold) and/or tresholds for removing 0/1/2/3 bundles, but there is none. (Also, compare to the healing potions that represent 2 bundles. PC's don't lose 2 TB's if they use those. Likewise, the gold represents 3 bundles, but the PC's shouldn't lose them if they use those golds.)
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Venture-Agent, Online—VTT
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Depending on the order tasks are done in, with 3GP per PC per day, there's a decent chance that they won't get through cleaning the dungeon and deciphering the writing in the shrine and find out about the 40GP cost of purifying the shrine until their funds are depleted enough to have to pay out of pocket. Cleansing the shrine isnt required to move forward with the scenario, but it's a worthwhile data point in trying to make sense of which interpretation is intended. I ran the scenario with the 3GP/day total cost, because the way the 3 treasure bundles were written, it seemed like having leftover hold was intended. Additionally, tight accounting will likely make the middle section of this scenario take a bit longer in real time, when it's already difficult to run without scheduling an extra-long 6-8 hour slot.