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I've seen this issue on several GM threads and wanted to collate them into a broader discussion.
It seems like there's a pretty wide discrepancy on how many Treasure Bundles to expect from a scenario. Some make it nearly impossible to get less than 10, e.g. #1-10. Some hide them in weird places where it's not obvious to go without GM prompting, e.g., #1-14.
Now, I'm sure there's going to be commentary on which way it should be. But the bigger issue is that there's a wide discrepancy between scenarios and a wide discrepancy between GMs in the grey zones.
Another semi-gripe of mine is that a lot of the Treasure Bundles seem to be ... bundled. There's often 4-5 locations where Treasure Bundles can be found, each with 2-3 Treasure Bundles. This means that, in scenarios where the Treasure Bundles are in esoteric locations, there is a lot of gold riding on single checks. One bad check and the party collectively loses 12 Bundles; on the flip side one weirdo at the table decides to reach into the commode and finds a diamond.
I think it would be helpful to have clarity on what is expected - either from TPTB, or by some kind of consensus.
Someone posted in the #1-20 GM thread that it seemed like expectations are lower later in the season. That may be true, but it also may be that coming from PFS1 (where full gold was expected and the GM had to manually subtract gold whenever mistakes were made) just meant that GMs had changed their approach as they got used to the new system (where GMs manually add gold whenever Treasure Bundles are found). I'll also throw out the possibility that the later scenarios seem to have better boons so maybe the writers intentionally made it harder to get gold.
I don't know which it is, but it seems like discussion is warranted before the gulf widens too much.
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Gold at lower levels needs to be easier to acquire, so your character isn't permanently playing catch-up.
Gold at higher levels can afford to be missed without too much detriment to the life of your character.
Also having gold easier to find at lower levels gives new players a chance to learn the ropes.
By the time they're mid-level, they should have the experience to look around when the easy stuff isn't available.
Also, verisimilitude. Junior agents get the easy jobs. Veterans gotta dig through the muck.
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When I am GMing, I typically assume that if the players state that they are "searching" as their exploration mode, I will make the needed perception checks for them. I feel that this avoids a lot of the "I search the pile of refuse. Then I tear apart the bed..." while rewarding them for taking the time to at least declare they are searching.
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That sounds reasonable to me, I'd just like to see the expectation documented in the guide.
That, or there's some general agreement that that's what we're going to do.
I don't want to be the jerk who's strictly enforcing the rules if everyone else is giving out Treasure Bundles like Halloween candy. I also don't want to be the jerk who's handing out Treasure Bundles like Halloween candy when everyone else is strictly enforcing RAW.
It's kind of like speeding while driving. I don't want to drive around at the speed limit if almost everyone is speeding, but I also don't want to be speeding if almost everyone is hugging the speed limit.
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Sometimes bad rolls happen, though.
If the DC to find the treasure was 20 and nobody in the 6-person group rolls that, they don't find it.
I feel like that's why some scenarios have a plethora of opportunities, to cover for failures.
And some could disappear when an entire section gets cut in editing, too.
Whatever the case, it's really no different than PFS1. Sometimes you don't get full rewards. If Leadership held the idea that you always got full rewards, you'd just get a check at the end of the scenario direct deposited into your AbadarCorp bank account and searching for Bundles wouldn't be a thing.
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I don't think that anybody is saying that full rewards should be automatic. Bad decisions, a very bad party makeup, signficantly bad rolls, etc are all fair reasons to lose some rewards.
But a lot of the current discussion is caused by one scenario where you lost a treasure bundle unless you Crit a Society roll. One where the characters have NO clue that this is a consequence so rerolls are very unlikely. Which seems to me to be going WAY too far.
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I don't think there's anything wrong with low probability Treasure Bundles, so long as it's understood to be low probability.
For instance, there's nothing wrong with a scheme of:
- 4 Treasure Bundles that are "critical path" and really can't be missed unless something is FUBAR.
- 4 Treasure Bundles that are mildly tangential (like 1 for every Secondary Success) and are 75% to achieve.
- 4 "low probability" Treasure Bundles that are 25% to achieve.
Mathematically, this works out to an expectation of 8 Bundles (4 gimmes, 3 of 4 secondaries, 1 of 4 low probs), and that's fine, so long as everyone agrees that 8 is expected.
The verbiage that people are "losing" Treasure Bundles suggests that, mentally, people expect 10. If you get 9 Treasure Bundles, you *lost* one, not gained nine. That'd be a scheme where you put in 10 high-probability Treasure Bundles along the critical path.
And that's fine too, so long as everyone agrees 10 are expected.
I just think there's a significant heterogenity within the community so you'll eventually end up with systematic power discrepancies.
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I have been trying to signal moments in-story where players should consider using Hero Points.
After GMing a scenario where players felt cheated out of bundles I began thinking more conscientiously about this and trying to integrate it into the narrative. (When I GM'd that scenario a second time I said something like "You wonder if there are time-lost treasures down here — you'd have the time to look if you excelled at avoiding hazards and staying alive." Now, that group also missed a bundle but felt good about it at the end as they understood what was at stake and spent hero points to have a better chance at success. Sometimes the dice just aren't on your side.)
Both players and GMs sometimes struggle with Hero Points. GMs can have a hard time signaling in narrative terms when it's good for players to spend an out-of-game resource. Players struggle with using Hero Points as a tactical resource that can and SHOULD be used as often instead of hoarded.
I mentioned this in another thread, but the high bar on successes makes more sense from a design standpoint if you assume players are tactically using hero points. My players don't always get all the treasure bundles, but they've gotten more on average since I've worked on giving them in-story clues (or at worst, out of story clues; in another recent scenario I mentioned that their secondary success conditions could be improved by succeeding at certain tasks — e.g. their bosses in the Society would be impressed with speed). And if they miss out they feel okay about it because I made the stakes clear at the time instead of glossing over a moment that costs them gold.
GMs who are thinking about in-story clues will have a higher expected treasure bundle ratio than the ones who aren't as vested in helping their players succeed.
Finally, I expect that over time we will see the player base improving as a whole and optimizing Hero Point spends, which will improve expected bundles overall.
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Except that your numbers rely on there being 12 possible treasure bundles in the scenario. I don’t think that’s been the case.Ok but I'm pretty sure that the exact numbers in Watery Soup's post aren't the point, the point is that there's some sort of consistent guideline.
There are guidelines for how many treasure bundles are included in a scenario. 10. Making one of those nearly impossible to achieve means you're nearly guaranteed to miss out on one of those bundles.
If there were 12 bundles, and 1 of the bundles was nearly impossible to find, it wouldn't be an issue, because you'd still have more bundles than you can actually acquire that would be possible to find. Of course you aren't going to feel bad about missing a bundle if you're still getting max rewards, and of course one poorly written bundle isn't going to feel so bad if it's still possible to get full rewards. And even if 4 of the bundles are hard to find, you still have multiple chances to succeed at enough of them for it not to matter, because you only need to find 2 of the 4 to still get max rewards.
But that isn't the system we have. We have a system where there are 10 bundles, and in the majority of scenarios (at least that I've played and others have referenced) all 10 bundles are likely to be found. You might miss one occasionally, but that's very different than writing one in where it's a surprise if it's found. If an author does that, they are already deviating from the expectation, because the expectation has been set by the existing scenarios.
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Except that your numbers rely on there being 12 possible treasure bundles in the scenario. I don’t think that’s been the case.
It should be considered (>10 possible, 10 max) on a writing level.
We have a system where there are 10 bundles, and in the majority of scenarios (at least that I've played and others have referenced) all 10 bundles are likely to be found.
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What I do know is that people are calculating out what equipment they can buy when based on finding full rewards, and that it doesn't seem like there are widespread instances of people getting significantly less than full rewards, barring a couple of harder to find bundles.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Reward: There is a hidden treasure trove taken from
other victims stashed in a nearby cave. If the PCs manage
to defeat or drive away the secondary antagonists, they can
easily find the rocky lair where the antagonists have stored
these items. If a PC Searches the area and succeeds at a
DC 10 Perception Check to Seek, that PC finds a weapons
cache with bolas, a khopesh (+1 khopesh in Subtier 3–4),
and a fighting fan, representing 3 Treasure Bundles.
Considering your job is to put a stop to the attacks, searching the nearby area for the lair of the attackers (which you presumably thrashed) is quire reasonable.
Given just how easy that cave is to find, it's probably in the we-don't-talk-about-the-giant-sphinx on the map.
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It’s the same problem PFS1 had with Prestige Points. The initial assumption was that a character would average 4.5 TPA/level. But that expectation was never communicated anywhere except in response to messageboard posts. Many GMs assumed that the expectation was that you would always get both points in a scenario. I ran into plenty of people who were genuinely shocked and angry that they might possibly get less than the maximum.
I agree, an explicit statement would be very helpful in setting expectations. Right in the “treasure bundle” section of the Guide. Preferably something less than 10 (even 9.5) so that players will he less likely to feel “cheated” if they don’t get 10.
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1-14
I agree that the PCs are "supposed" to find it. As a GM, I weaved it in to the story - mid-combat, a player who crit failed an attack had an arrow sail into a cave and hit a wooden box; this gave the characters a reason to explore. But that was my judgement call - I actively gave them a hint.
Am I a jerk for pushing them to explore and giving them 3 Bundles nobody else got? Or is the GM who lets the PCs continue the jerk because all the GMs are hinting or straight up giving it out?
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Venture-Agent, Online—VTT
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Still 1-14:
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Venture-Captain, Online—VTT
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A simple...
There really isn't anything more complicated than them saying they look around needed to trigger the search check to find the bundles as the scenario pretty clearly states.
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That's playing gotcha with the players ...
I agree that's bad.
This thread is here to clarify that, that what GMs seem to be mostly doing is we expect GMs to be doing - interpreting whether something is supposed to happen, and then nudging things in that direction.
A simple ...
I'm not really looking for help on 1-14 - I posted what I actually did in a spoiler above.
I agree it seems simple. The 1-14 case is an example where I wouldn't have thought anyone would do any differently than what most of us did ... and yet, at least one person in this thread experienced it.
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But a lot of the current discussion is caused by one scenario where you lost a treasure bundle unless you Crit a Society roll. One where the characters have NO clue that this is a consequence so rerolls are very unlikely. Which seems to me to be going WAY too far.
I think it is even more egregious in...
You are not specifically warned that the money given for you to use to rebild the lodge should be conserved and represents 30% of your treasure reward. My group used all of our money to ensure we would succeed at maxing out the rebuild (our primary mission), so based on the text above, we were surprised when the GM granted us full gold. I fully expect to see a lot of GMs do otherwise.
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But a lot of the current discussion is caused by one scenario where you lost a treasure bundle unless you Crit a Society roll. One where the characters have NO clue that this is a consequence so rerolls are very unlikely. Which seems to me to be going WAY too far.I think it is even more egregious in...
** spoiler omitted **
I agree.
I remember that when I played it I was very surprised that some of the players were insisting that they spend their money BEFORE the granted funds ran out.
Which made absolutely no sense to me. I had no problems with spending money if necessary to complete things, but it seemed to me that the only sane action was to FIRST spend the societies money and THEN spend our own.
After finding out that their spending a few gold earned us much more I thought it quite possible that at least some were acting on meta knowledge. Either that or they were picking up on GM hints that I totally missed.
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Let me add, that I actually like the way 1-18 is written and the idea that we can earn less than full treasure-bundles because of decisions made during the play. However, it is fairly clear that many (most?) GMs are afraid (not really the right word, but...) to give less than full rewards because of the vitriolic response that tends to elicit. So, its a bit counter-productive.
If we want this to be less of a shock to the players, we need to make it a larger part of the campaign. There should be strong possibilities in almost all scenarios where you can earn less than max rewards. Promote it clearly in the Guide/rules, and the Paizo team needs to "own" the rule and support it when the subject comes up and back GMs when they do it. Otherwise, it seems like a "gotcha" and makes players mad and we should never do it. In fact, the way scenarios have been written and player's expectations, we should just eliminate the idea of encounter-based treasure and just award a set amount at the conclusion of the scenario regardless of the gameplay. That's essentially what happens most of the time anyway
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Spoiler:After finding out that their spending a few gold earned us much more I thought it quite possible that at least some were acting on meta knowledge.
I did have to chuckle at the player who meta-gamed themselves into a loss because they spent more of their own gold than the value of the three bundles they received for it. Serves you right for metagaming :-P
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I would say that players metagaming 1-18 is a wrongful response to a rightful feeling that the way that scenario handles treasure is unreasonable.
1) How much gold you need to have left to gain how many bundles
2) How much the laborers actually cost
3) That you should try to save money by cutting corners instead of trying to build the best lodge is... surprising
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This has been in the guide from the beginning of the guide's publication:
Expectations and Creative Solutions: In the course of completing a scenario, the PCs are likely to acquire all 10 Treasure Bundles as part of overcoming challenges and inspecting their surroundings. That said, a non-linear adventure might include encounter areas (and treasure) the PCs miss entirely, and there might be small portions of treasure that a group would overlook entirely (such as hidden in a concealed room). As a result, even a capable party might not secure all 10 Treasure Bundles. Taking into account the free consumable items granted to PCs at the beginning of adventures, the wealth earned by Pathfinder Society characters is slightly higher than the standard provided in the Core Rulebook. That means that although missing the occasional Treasure Bundle stings, it’s accounted for in the campaign.
However, awarding fewer than the maximum Treasure Bundles shouldn’t be a punitive tool. Unless recovering a Treasure Bundle is tied to succeeding at key skill checks or making key choices, PCs who overcome an encounter with creative solutions should earn the same reward they would have earned by defeating that foe in combat. Adventures call out special exceptions, such as treasure only accessible if the PCs investigate a particular secret door or agree to an NPC’s proposal. If the PCs’ actions allow them to bypass the area or encounter where they would have the chance to recover the treasure, it’s okay to relocate the opportunity to a later point with similar requirements to recover the treasure.
Example: The PCs are supposed to attack a keep, and they successfully trick the guards into escorting the PCs to the final encounter with the evil warlord rather than fighting their way in. By tricking the guards, the PC not only skip the guards fight (which has 2 Treasure Bundles associated with it) and never have a chance to pick up the easily-discovered magic wand in the guardroom (1 additional Treasure Bundle), but they also skip a fight with a minotaur (who guards coins representing 2 Treasure Bundles). The PCs should receive credit for these rewards anyway; they overcame the guards encounter, bypassed the minotaur, and would have easily recovered the treasure afterward.
However, escorting the PCs through the keep also means the PCs neither explore the side rooms nor have a chance to find the secret vault where a golden chalice is hidden (1 Treasure Bundle). Finding this vault would have required a PC Searching during exploration and succeeding at a DC 20 Perception check, and the room’s rewards cite that the PCs should only receive this reward if they find the room and recover the chalice. In this case the PCs should have a fair opportunity to find the chalice anyway, such as the secret door and room being relocated to the warlord’s throne room with the same Perception check DC.
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This has been in the guide from the beginning of the guide's publication:
Yes, but all things considered, the Guide is not exactly "easy access" and many people express frustration with it. So, its no surprise there are a lot of players unaware of what is says or even where it is. What we need is leadership making supporting comments whenever the subject comes up. If a player reports a complaint they didn't get all their rewards, the message should be clearly made that yes, that is correct. You do not always earn full rewards. Until/unless that reinforcement is routinely provided, many players will continue to complain because they got "screwed over" by the GM.
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As a result, even a capable party might not secure all 10 Treasure Bundles.
That means that although missing the occasional Treasure Bundle stings, it’s accounted for in the campaign.
Well, it should at least satisfy the people requesting that leadership put the expectation in the Guide since it’s already there, regardless of how difficult it is to search.
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Two points about that section of the guide:
a) Some GMs think its only about the non-linear/creative solutions bit (and less about overall expectations). 'Oh you messed a chance to do a check, ok lets move the check to an appropriate place' (and even this I see extremely seldom used in discussions of awkward checks).
b) "missing the occasional" sounds like 10 is still he expected, but don't be surprised if 7-9 happens sometimes. Recently its felt like 6-8 is the expected. Which is a difference from what's spelled out.
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The first sentence says, "In the course of completing a scenario, the PCs are likely to acquire all 10 Treasure Bundles as part of overcoming challenges and inspecting their surroundings." That, alone, sets the expectation that missing a treasure bundle should be unusual (though not impossible). Certainly not that there should be 1 or more treasure bundles per scenario that are likely to be missed. As usual, people will read the same language and take different interpretations away from it. Just because it says they might still miss a bundle doesn't mean that a GM should be looking for opportunities to have them miss a bundle. Especially not with a scenario like 1-14 and the way it describes those bundles. I haven't done 1-18 yet, so not looking at those spoilers to know the situation there.
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Taking into account the free consumable items granted to PCs at the beginning of adventures, the wealth earned by Pathfinder Society characters is slightly higher than the standard provided in the Core Rulebook.
Taking the explanatory text that I cut in my last post for streamlining, you could (and obviously I don’t think people should be expected to have done this) estimate how many treasure bundles you could miss and still come out flush.
1st Level - School 8 gp - Treasure Bundle 1.4 gp - 5 bundles missed (7 gp)
2nd Level - School 8 gp - Treasure Bundle 2.2 gp - 3 bundles missed (6.6 gp)
3rd Level - School 24 gp - Treasure Bundle 3.8 gp - 6 bundles missed (22.8 gp)
4th Level - School 24 gp - Treasure Bundle 6.4 gp- 3 bundles missed (19.2 gp)
5th Level - School 60 gp - Treasure Bundle 10 gp - 6 bundles missed (60 gp)
6th Level - School 60 gp - Treasure Bundle 15 gp - 4 bundles missed (60 gp)
Treasure bundle value is dependent on the individual PC level, but number of bundles is dependent on group performance. So using the higher level in a given tier, I’d say 3 is around the “expected” number of treasure bundles.
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Just because it says they might still miss a bundle doesn't mean that a GM should be looking for opportunities to have them miss a bundle.
I definitely agree with that, mathematics and academic discussion aside.
I also feel from the text that the usual should be 10/10 bundles, but at the same time, missing up to 3 due to bad luck or even difficulty written into the scenario is not hurting a PC’s wealth by level. Your PC may not have the same power as someone’s PC who did get 10/10 on all their scenarios, but you shouldn’t be underpowered for the scenario.
Whether that plays out in reality is a different question...
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Yeah, missing a few bundles here or there isn't going to hurt you too much.
Essentially, I don't see an issue with a setup that is If you're not fully successful at the mission, you don't get full rewards as a result. I'm more bothered by GMs not awarding treasure bundles on what feels like a technicality, when all other indications are that they should be easy to find in the particular situation.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I think also it's irritating if a scenario has you make a dozen skill checks over the course of it, all of which seem equally important, but you have to guess that one of them is worth spending a hero point on while the others aren't a big deal to fail.
I think in general, the hero point mechanic works better if players have a rough sense of how important it is to succeed at a check/how bad it is to fail it.
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I'm probably repeating myself, but in my experience almost all players do not mind losing treasure (or Fame) if the loss feels "fair". They mind (a lot) when it is not. The amount you lose isn't the main thing, its the perceived unfairness.
And it doesn't matter if the unfairness is on the part of the scenario writer or on the part of the GM. It still feels wrong.
Obviously, people will disagree as to what is "fair" but I think most would agree that it is fair to lose if
a) You fail or partially fail the mission
b) You suffer from extremely bad luck (everybody failing to make a standard level perception check, for example)
c) You suffer from a very poor party make up for a particular scenario. If the highest diplomacy check in the group is -1 at level 4 and a treasure was gated behind a diplomacy check then that failure, while regrettable, is fair.
And I think that most people consider it unfair if (to take real examples)
a) perfectly normal, rational play loses you bundles where what succeeds is behaviour that frankly is so unusual or irrational that succeeding makes one immediately suspect that metagaming cheating has occurred
b) the bundle is gated behind an absurdly unlikely event (a crit roll on a skill that many characters do NOT have).
Other hypothetical examples of things that I'd think to be unfair
c) gated behind an unusual ability (eg, ability to speak to animals)
d) gated behind PCs failing to explicitly mention things that most groups take for granted (eg, the treasure is in the toilet so if nobody mentions that they're going to the bathroom the treasure is lost)
e) Gated behind the PCs FAILNG (In at least 1 PF1 scenario, if you successfully find and bypass a trap you lose treasure. That, to me, was unfair and wrong).
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I think the problem at the table may rise from individual perceptions of what was fair.
On the unfair list, my personal thoughts for the 0 cp they’re worth:
a) agree
b) partially agree. I think it’s fair if the OP team has an internal algorithm for how often a treasure bundle can be “very unlikely” (like 1 every 5 scenarios or whatever), then it’s fair to put one behind a critical success. I also think most skills are possessed across a party, but it may just be my tables.
c) agree (you shouldn’t need a specific class to “win”)
d) agree, but there’s probably variation on what writers and GMs think is SOP for adventurers.
e) Ew. Definitely agree.