Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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I sincerely recommend you use the Automatic Bonus Progression variant from the GMG to make this work.Because D&D gold isn't realistic, and handing out salaries of thousands of gold makes no in-game sense. (The entire yearly Edgewatch police budget is likely less than 1000 gold. But you will soon have to hand this amount out to individual policemen if you run with the default Pathfinder economy)
Eh, I'm not too worried about it.
In my game, Edgewatch will be better funded, and will receive additionally funding thanks to the exploits of the PCs bringing positive attention to the organization.
The pay they're getting is commensurate to the pay offered by an in-game organization that operates in the same city. The PCs are doing similar work to Pathfinders, it makes sense to me that they should get paid similar wages.
Like you say, D&D gold isn't realistic. Never has been, probably never will be. Why sweat it now?
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I sincerely recommend you use the Automatic Bonus Progression variant from the GMG to make this work.
Because D&D gold isn't realistic, and handing out salaries of thousands of gold makes no in-game sense. (The entire yearly Edgewatch police budget is likely less than 1000 gold. But you will soon have to hand this amount out to individual policemen if you run with the default Pathfinder economy)
I strongly disagree. At least past the very early levels.
High level characters can easily be paid absurd rates in the game, and the world shows high level ones being paid at those rates or higher. Absalom is a city big enough to have a standard pay scale for high level people that retains such personnel rather than losing them to the private sector, and needs such personnel rather badly.
As another option, the bounties system suggested earlier definitely avoids this issue pretty thoroughly.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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Yeah, it has nothing to do with realism for me. One could even argue that Edgewatch operating as privateers is the more realistic option.
It just feels gross to me and my players.
I’m making changes to make the game more morally palatable, not more realistic. I’m ok with making the game less realistic to achieve those ends.
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Any suggestion to use salaries or bounties is born out of a desire to make things more realistic than "loot your fallen foes" (for policemen anyway).
I'll just third the notion that no, this isn't about realism. It's about not wanting to play cops who loot people's fallen bodies. It's a morality issue.
My point is that salaries and bounties quickly end up with exactly the same realism issues. The only real way to achieve anything even close to a realistic approach is to dump the default economy altogether, which is what ABP does.
Salaries and bounties aren't more realistic, but they aren't really less realistic either, and realism is really and profoundly not the issue.
If I don't do that, I can just as well stick to the regular way of doing things. Switching out looting for salaries doesn't appreciably make things more realistic. It's just a coat of paint that doesn't really fix anything.
It doesn't fix the realism issue, but realism was never the issue we were having in the first place. It 100% fixes the moral issue of cops acting like jackbooted thugs and stealing everything that isn't nailed down...which is the moral issue we were looking for a solution to.
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There are more items in the game than just weapons and skill items, you know. So you're saying it'd be fine for a cop to beat someone up and take their magic staff since it's not covered under ABP, right?
Quick question: How important is the Dragonfly Pagoda for the rest of the AP? My group got very excited at the mention of a bounty for help keeping the peace and intend to set off to defeat stragglers in the cordoned off part of the Precipice quarter.
It'd be a bit awkward to give them all the information and all backgrounds of what is about to happen in the Pagoda, but they are already on the trail of the missing people and could conceivably go in and do the House of Planes as expected by the AP. I'd just create a dungeon to get their fighting quota/level filled while they travel around the undercity towards that house (essentially failing forward on that count)
award xp for the challenge listed for the room
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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Why would I say that?
I'm saying that in the regular game, and I can hardly believe I have to explain this; if you play a honest cop and don't loot that +1 striking sword, you will eventually die since you don't get essential items.
But there is a lot of stuff in the Treasure chapter that is much MUCH less essential.
If you use Automatic Bonus Progression, you get what you need automatically. This enables you to play your character as an upstanding law enforcement officer, since the only things you might miss out on are the nice-to-haves, not the must-haves.
If there is a person saying you can beat people up and stealing their stuff just because their stuff isn't worthless to you it sure isn't me.
As I understand you, you're suggesting that only weapons, armor, and skill bonuses are required treasure. Anything else on top of that is non-essential, and removing it won't result in the players "dying" (or more broadly, having a tough time with the AP).
But the ABP rules specifically warn against this. They suggest that you still give out currency, consumables, and property runes, and warn that removing almost all treasure will make the game more difficult, even with ABP bonuses. Difficult enough to ensure a TPK? Maybe, maybe not, but more difficult nonetheless.
Based on table 10-9--even using ABP--by 12th level the PCs are individually pocketing 1000+ gold each level in currency alone. They're also getting high-value consumables on the reg.
So where does this treasure come from?
Either:
*The city is providing it, in which case you're still not solving the realism issue you have
*Private individuals are providing it to the PCs, which smacks of corruption and bribery
or
*They're looting it from criminals, which again, brings up some nasty moral issues
For the record, I don't have any problem with ABP, I think its fine. It's not something I or my players are interested in, but I don't think its a bad system. You want to use it, you do you, boo.
I just don't think its as perfect a solution to the treasure issues in this AP as you seem to.
Has anyone come across a community map pack for the book, shot myself in the foot got excited and bought the physical copy plus find it much nicer to read than a PDF.
But due to this I dont have any maps I can use, as covid has restricted to how we play and need to use roll20 to run my games.
Thanks
I haven't had a chance to read through the whole book yet, but as I was flipping through it I came across the name Reginald Vancaskerkin. Was there any hint at being related for Orik Vancaskerkin, or is Vancaskerkin the Smith of Golarion?
I have to say, Hendrid Pratchett is one of the scariest and abhorrent monsters I've ever seen for Pathfinder. Facing this guy is worse than facing a Shoggoth, at least you expect the eldritch horror to come if facing one of them or know that they're around.
This guy is an act to follow for Chaotic Evil Villians, he's a charismatic manipulator to where he's easily so trustworthy to any person that would interact with him, yet so demented that the more you begin to peel away at his alibi and hotel, the darker tones start to kick in and break away at you mentally with each of his heinous crimes.
His form of revenge on getting hit with a mug is peeling away the skins of the four adventurers or mentally torturing two people to kill each other and make fake escape attempts that end up in vain, only for them to become scarred that they can't even trust the help that comes to save them. The fact that he keeps Ralso tied psychologically by having two dolls to act as her replacement sisters and his other demented works of art. And let's not forget the two ghosts he keeps as children to see him as a father figure.
James, congratulations. I am literally scared of this guy.
Wow, I hadn't noticed what he did to that adventuring party until I read through this comment, and after taking a deeper look into him I'm pretty spooked myself. Every description of Pratchett's motivations and activities is so incredibly horrible and gripping. He's so casually and cruelly evil in his actions, all while acting like a perfect honest gentleman in public.
Some of my player's ended up hearing me audibly gasp as I read through his backstory for the first time while they were setting up. I think he's a great villain and I'm real excited to see how my party handles his murder hotel.
Has anyone come across a community map pack for the book, shot myself in the foot got excited and bought the physical copy plus find it much nicer to read than a PDF.
But due to this I dont have any maps I can use, as covid has restricted to how we play and need to use roll20 to run my games.
Thanks
I have remade all maps in book one on dungeondraft. Tomorrow or next week I will post it on reddit, if I remember I will post it here or in another thread too.
Such a thread already exists.
Yeah, the Vancaskerkin family are all related and mostly at least vaguely shady, and mostly found in Varisia (this one explicitly moved to Absalom from there, I believe).
It's a bit of a running gag/easter egg.
I had wondered about that, but I didn't know it was a running gag. That's fantastic!
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thought i'd come report some PC deaths so others can maybe learn from this and possibly prevent it happening to their party
so, the 1st happened in the menagerie, i think to the ankrav, they found all of the single enemy fights there really hard except the rust monster (which i removed elite from so they could fight it with 3 remaining PCs)
The next deaths were due to the gelatinous cube at the start of ch 3, only 1 PC searching, i asked about 3 times, "are you sure only 1 of you is searching" before rolling their perceptions, the searching one failed and walked right into it, they proceeded as a grp to fail almost all of the fort saves and reflex saves, so it ended with 3 of them dying while engulfed because they stayed paralysed until they went to dying then just died cause pretty hard to survive that. I did read the description that included the shiny armour and weapons sitting in the corridor, either they didn't hear me properly or weren't suspicious about that?
the last PC only survived cause they never failed a reflex save and passed a fort save in time to run away
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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Yeah, that Ankhrav fight is gnarly. I almost wiped my party with it. I ended up pulling some punches by having it use less optimal tactics (using its two-action armor chomp regardless of target)
Of course, part of that might be that they were running on fumes by the time the got to it--no spell slots, no healing potions, everyone immune to treat wounds for an hour.
Now that they're second level, and have more reliable healing out of combat, I expect that they'll be a bit more durable.
I have a question. In Pratchett's NPC entry in the toolbox is says "When the PCs first meet him at the Arcadian, he’s wearing a suit of blue and gold" (emphasis mine). However, in the adventures, the agents first meet Pratchett in the Tipsy Tengu. Is this an error, or am I missing something?