Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I am seeing a lot of posts on the Digitization / guide update thread complaining about Hirelings becoming limited. And a lot of the complaints are "some treasure bundles and secondary success conditions are locked behind skill checks."
I think people are missing the point that it is not (and never has been, not since the first days of PFS1) intended that every PC acquire *every* secondary success condition and full cash rewards every single adventure.
Treasure bundles are locked behind an array of difficulties, and not all parties are well suited to all secondary success conditions.
I find it helps to think about PFS2 scenarios the same way as everything else in PFS 2. There are Crit successes (full rewards), Successes (Partial rewards), Failures (No rewards) and Crit failures (Character deaths, or even TPKs)
As long as the the Crit successes and failures are uncommon, and crit failures are rare, the system is working as intended.
If every adventure is a crit success, then something is *probably* wrong.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Most Pathfinder PCs already get an extra lore skill, selected from a list of lore skills commonly used in the campaign, and an extra feat at fifth level, for free.
Hirelings let you take additional skills for a cost so low as to be essentially free. You can buy everything a given faction offers for ~40 fame. By 6th level you have 72 fame meaning you could have a hireling in every single skill and every thing your faction offers. Honestly as it is currently, no PC should ever waste a feat on the feats that give you your level in proficiency in untrained skills. They should just take hireling manager and be (effectively) expert in every skill.
Which of course will mean that scenario success conditions will have to become harder. Which means that anyone who does *not* build that way will be unable to succeed.
Even now you could still do that, you can even bring them all with you, it is just that once you benefit from one, you can't use the rest of them, so you are getting essentially one "Free" expert skill per scenario that you get to choose when you need to use it.
Can any of you think of a home campaign GM who would just be "Oh, none of you took that skill? Okay, well a passing expert stops and helps you with it and follows you for the next three days to help out.
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I think people are missing the point that it is not (and never has been, not since the first days of PFS1) intended that every PC acquire *every* secondary success condition and full cash rewards every single adventure.
If the intention is as you say, then a few things need to happen
1) This intent has to be VERY clearly communicated. I've been playing PF1 since season 3 and playing PF2 from the playtest and I have NEVER realized that was the actual intent. I vaguely recall some statements in PF1 days that the 4 Fame you got for a module was because that was the expected amount for players to get over 3 sessions but that was obviously NOT the case (see next point)
2) If this IS the intent then a great many existing scenarios need to be changed to make things a lot harder. My ACTUAL expectation, based on observation across some 10 years now in PF1, Starfinder AND PF2, is that a complete success (full money, full XP, full Fame, full faction goals when they were a thing) IS the norm and happens well over 90% of the time. You can expect us to trust our actual experience a lot more than what somebody tells us.
3) Even if this is the goal, I very strongly recommend that the implementation be one that seems "fair". I have no issue if we miss a goal because nobody has Nature trained or because we all failed our Nature checks. That seems, to me at least, "fair". It is reasonable to assume that some party member(s) will have Nature and roll reasonably well but bad luck happens both in dice rolls and in party composition.
On the other hand (to take an ACTUAL example from a PFS scenario) it seems to me quite unfair to hide a treasure bundle behind rolling a critical success on a check with a moderately uncommon skill (or ANY skill, for that matter). The DC was sufficiently high that it pretty much meant rolling a 20 even for almost all characters invested in the skill and there was absolutely NO in world hint that this was sufficiently important for the player to blow a Hero point on it.
As far as I'm concerned, there is a huge difference between "If you've got a decently mixed group and don't roll badly you'll get the treasure" (fair chance of failure) and "even with the perfect group you've got to roll very well to get the treasure".
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Most Pathfinder PCs already get an extra lore skill, selected from a list of lore skills commonly used in the campaign, and an extra feat at fifth level, for free.
Hirelings let you take additional skills for a cost so low as to be essentially free.
I agree with this. PFS2, as it currently stands, has made getting skills a bit TOO easy. A limit of one hireling seems just fine to me.
But, not at all surprisingly, you're going to get push back from people when you change the rules. Nefreet (I think it was him) is right that some people have made characters "like a finely tuned watch".
I think the correct solution is to make the changes that are thought best for the campaign but to be extremely liberal in allowing rebuilds for characters affected. Honour system, no VC vetting or any such nonsense.
If somebody wants to "cheat" and completely rebuild their character because of this, I just don't care. They're "cheating" and getting the benefit of some ACP for free. No big deal. Or, at any rate, a far better solution than them being justifiably peeved because Paizo changed the rules on them so they "feel" shafted.
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But, not at all surprisingly, you're going to get push back from people when you change the rules. Nefreet (I think it was him) is right that some people have made characters "like a finely tuned watch".
I think the correct solution is to make the changes that are thought best for the campaign but to be extremely liberal in allowing rebuilds for characters affected. Honour system, no VC vetting or any such nonsense.
Exactly this.
I've spent nearly 20 years working in the Swiss Watch industry, and I can't help but apply that way of thinking to everything I do, including gaming.
I used this analogy in the other thread, but it's relevant here as well: if a client brought their watch to me for service, and I broke something, I have the moral imperative to set it right, at no cost to my client.
That's basic customer respect.
I implore Paizo to view their Organized Play members as clients who deserve nothing less.
It truly doesn't matter what you think of Hirelings or how you can rationalize doing away with them. The fact is, they worked a certain way, and were used in that way, and any changes need to be accommodated for.
You'd want nothing less if you had trusted me with your watch.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I have never seen paizo refuse rebuilds over major rules changes, and would be surprised to see them refuse rebuilds over this.
But as far as I have read, while I have seen a great deal of anger over people who built characters who were going to be "damaged" by this change, I have not seen any one start a thread asking what rebuild options will be offered, or suggesting rebuild options that they feal would be fair.
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I have never seen paizo refuse rebuilds over major rules changes, and would be surprised to see them refuse rebuilds over this.
Unfortunately, they HAVE in the past refused rebuilds over minor rules changes. And people disagree what is a minor and major rules change.
But as far as I have read, while I have seen a great deal of anger over people who built characters who were going to be "damaged" by this change, I have not seen any one start a thread asking what rebuild options will be offered, or suggesting rebuild options that they feal would be fair.
I can only speak for myself, but I was waiting to see what the rules were before commenting :-). And my personal ox hasn't yet been gored.
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I have ten characters now, but this change only affects my -2001 (although I know people who have more characters with 2+ Ally Boons as well).
My character started off knowing Survival and Society. He had both the Forager and Multilingual skill feats. He had Butchering Lore, as well.
I shunted all of that to my Hirelings when I rebuilt my character between Levels 4 and 5, and he's now Level 8.
I am going to have to get rid of BOTH Hirelings now with this change, because I've been using another Ally since Level 1 (the Lastwall Debt Boon from the Playtest), and I don't want to get rid of that Boon.
The only way to make this right, is to offer a full rebuild.
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Unfortunately, they HAVE in the past refused rebuilds over minor rules changes. And people disagree what is a minor and major rules change.I have never seen paizo refuse rebuilds over major rules changes, and would be surprised to see them refuse rebuilds over this.
The banning of the Ring of Fangs over in Starfinder Society was the most egregious, recently, and offering only a 300 credit refund as an accommodation was simply a slap to the face.
"Sorry I broke your $10,000 timepiece. Here's a $50 Starbucks gift card".
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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My own personal expectation, based on running and playing almost every single PFS2 scenario is:
If you have a moderately mixed party and roll moderately well you will get the primary goal
If you have a well mixed party and roll moderately well, or a moderately mixed party, and roll very well, you will get the secondary success conditions
If you have a very fine tuned party or very good rolls, you will get the 10th treasure bundle.
Many early scenarios 1-01 through 1-12 were, if anything, too generous, and almost everyone got almost every treasure bundle.
However, trying to write *every* scenario to give 9 treasure bundles reliably is an impossible goal. So I think it is reasonable to have an occasional treasure bundle hidden behind a crit success condition. (If the one Paul is talking about is the one I am thinking of, the treasure bundle is hidden behind crit a crit success on one of several of the free lore skills given by the pathfinder schools.) But I don't think all should do that, or do do that.
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I am going to have to get rid of BOTH Hirelings now with this change, because I've been using another Ally since Level 1 (the Lastwall Debt Boon from the Playtest), and I don't want to get rid of that Boon.
I think you misread what was written.
There is no limit on number of ally boons. Here are the limits:
You can only have one minion. If an ally boon gives you a minion or let's you take a minion, it does not override that limit. (You can't use the Verdant Wheel leshy companion boon to get a leshy familiar *and* an animal companion, for example.)
You can only benefit from one *hireling* boon.
So unless lastwall debt boon says it is a hireling or has the hireling tag, it is completely unaffected.
You can actually still bring both your hirelings on an adventure, but once you chose to benefit from one, you cannot benefit from the other.
Having a survival hireling and a society hireling seems.like it would be almost an ideal division in this case since relatively few scenarios are going to rely heavily on both those skills.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Jared, please stop.
It doesn't matter how you can rationalize the reasoning for the change. It doesn't matter if we agree or not with that conclusion. That's not the point.
We are Paizo's customers, and we feel wronged.
And that is perfectly valid, and you are entitled to some rebuilding. What the scope of that rebuilding will be, I really dont know, and is a decision that will happen way above my head and I have no input.
What I am discussing in this thread is what the rewards expectations are so that in future people don't go in expecting 100% full rewards, and feel wronged when they only get the (expected) 90%.
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In your first sentence of this thread you highlighted "I am seeing a lot of posts on the Digitization / guide update thread complaining about Hirelings becoming limited".
I don't care about 90% Treasure or not earning full Fame. I care about the first sentence of this thread.
Elsewhere, you wrote "An Ally boon cannot be used if the PC has already benefitted from a Minion".
If that is still correct, no character with a Familiar, Companion or other Minion could pick up a Hireling or benefit from an Ally Boon, right?
That is another Campaign change that should result in a full rebuild being offered.
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In your first sentence of this thread you highlighted "I am seeing a lot of posts on the Digitization / guide update thread complaining about Hirelings becoming limited".
I don't care about 90% Treasure or not earning full Fame. I care about the first sentence of this thread.
Elsewhere, you wrote "An Ally boon cannot be used if the PC has already benefitted from a Minion".
If that is still correct, no character with a Familiar, Companion or other Minion could pick up a Hireling or benefit from an Ally Boon, right?
That is another Campaign change that should result in a full rebuild being offered.
I believe that you're misinterpreting him.
I think that it is legal to have a minion (from class) AND a Hireling.
OR an Ally from a slotted boon AND a Hireling (just one active in any scenario).
His comment about more than one ally with disjoint skill sets is also valid. Won't work in all the cases but will work in quite a few (I know it isn't all that rare for my hireling to never roll a skill check)
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I have never seen paizo refuse rebuilds over major rules changes, and would be surprised to see them refuse rebuilds over this.
Int 3 Animal Companions (I'm still salty about this 10 years later, almost made me quite the campaign)
Flurry Rebuilds (SKR broke flurry. You could rebuild into a way to make it work, but when it would eventually be fixed you could not rebuild back. If you wanted to keep it the way you had to just not play the character for 9 months)
Archetyes such as Synthesist (No Full rebuild, could not change race, other class levels, traits, ability scores, feats that didn't directly apply to your archetyped levels etc)
You will be forced to update your character—adjusting only the features that have changed, not rebuilding entirely—once the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Class Guide is released.[/url]
APG playtest only allowed updating features that changed. Note that retraining was also not a thing back then.
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Animal Companions - The player base will never agree on this one. I am (and have always been) in the camp that making an Int 3 animal companion an independent entity (able to act essentially as an extra PC without a PC directing actions) is clearly way beyond what the rules intended, and people really shouldn't have tried to exploit the language. Others had very different opinions.
Weapon Cords - definitely should have been allowed to sell your second gun and retrain feats. The old wording was legal for years.
Flurry Rebuilds - Was a total Charlie-Fox. The good news was that Paizo listened to their customers, took a closer look at how much of their own published material they broke, and went to the interpretation that worked. The bad news was that it was a huge mess for 9 months. Especially with Mike's "you can rebuild but then you can't change back if we change the rule again."
Synthesist Rebuilds - Should have allowed free rebuilds. The 5 STR, 7 DEX, 7 CON Noble Scion synth-orac-aladins were clearly min-maxed cheese. But they were explicitly legal builds that became huge liabilities after the ban.
Bonus: Ring of Fangs (Starfinder) - Again, legal for years. Not allowing PCs to change feats and class levels that were only taken because of the ring was too harsh.
General: The PFS1 rebuild rules became a lot more lenient as time went on. Precisely because of the huge outcries those events caused. So yeah, for the most part your examples were of things that sucked. But they are also of things that happened 9 or more years ago. Things got better.
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You know, Jared, I really think you should pass this on to the team that updates the Guide. Some sort of statement like
The design expectation is that PCs will earn an average of 8 treasure bundles and 3 Fame/Reputation per successful completion of a 4-hour scenario. That doesn't mean you can't earn more or less than this number, but you shouldn't feel like you failed if you didn't get 10 treasure bundles.
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I would say the language is unclear enough that I now do not how to move forward with one of my characters. He's a GM baby, so I can wait, but the point is, I'm not sure what to do.
Class: Wizard with familiar thesis
Archetype: MC Witch
The idea for the character is a Miskatonic Professor who just MAY have spent a little too much time letting the abyss look back at him, so now, rather than having access to only arcane spells, there's some occult goodness, too.
But--if I can only have one minion/AC/whatever, I don't even know if this is actually playable.
I also don't have a problem with players have only one extra thing in the combat--I GM enough to be moderately irritated when one player's turn takes 20 minutes while everyone else's takes 5. With the above character, I'd never bother using the MC witch familiar do anything--but I need it in game so I have access to my spells.
tl;dr I hope the language about allies, minions, etc gets cleared up. I think there's been a lot of good editing in the online guide so far, and I'm optimistic.
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In your first sentence of this thread you highlighted "I am seeing a lot of posts on the Digitization / guide update thread complaining about Hirelings becoming limited".
I don't care about 90% Treasure or not earning full Fame. I care about the first sentence of this thread.
Elsewhere, you wrote "An Ally boon cannot be used if the PC has already benefitted from a Minion".
If that is still correct, no character with a Familiar, Companion or other Minion could pick up a Hireling or benefit from an Ally Boon, right?
That is another Campaign change that should result in a full rebuild being offered.
I believe that you're misinterpreting him.
I think that it is legal to have a minion (from class) AND a Hireling.
OR an Ally from a slotted boon AND a Hireling (just one active in any scenario).
His comment about more than one ally with disjoint skill sets is also valid. Won't work in all the cases but will work in quite a few (I know it isn't all that rare for my hireling to never roll a skill check)
It has been brought to my attention that the previous copy I posted from the guide has an error:
It should have read:
Ally: A boon with the Ally trait often places a Minion. An Ally boon that places a Minion cannot be used if the PC already has a Minion in play.
I am sorry if that created alarm or confusion.
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You know, Jared, I really think you should pass this on to the team that updates the Guide. Some sort of statement like
The design expectation is that PCs will earn an average of 8 treasure bundles and 3 Fame/Reputation per successful completion of a 4-hour scenario. That doesn't mean you can't earn more or less than this number, but you shouldn't feel like you failed if you didn't get 10 treasure bundles.It is in the new guide, as of a week ago.
Correction: As of a month and a week ago. (It went in on 8/12/2020.) That is how long I have been working on this thing.
** spoiler omitted **Spoiler:It's not as if it's meant to be a secret
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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I've generally be keeping quiet on a lot of my own thoughts on these threads due to waiting for the Guide to officially be out to comment on it.
However, I do think the topic of 'how frequently should Success Conditions and treasure bundles be met' is a good topic to debate/discuss even independent of the guide.
And while I am okay with 100% Rep and treasure being less common, in my experience that is not something that has been well expressed in either communications in this edition. A lot of people have already brought up treasure bundles or secondary conditions hinging on obscure skills in scenarios. In my experience so far, I've had a lot more of an issue with how frequently I am seeing Treasure Bundles being granted as a result of actions that either don't seem important within the context of the adventure or actions that seem antithetical to the Society's goals or exploration-sans-exploitation. Ones I particularly remember are:
~Turn down a dead end in a tunnel and spend time looking at a skeleton when you are quite possibly racing after an assassin when time is kind of important
Compared to 1e (which mostly just had you loose some amount of treasure if you failed to complete/fully complete an encounter), I've found the implementation of Treasure Bundles so far has resulted in players going into more of a 'loot everything not nailed down' mentality. Which IMO is a shame, and makes the Society look more like the common 'graverobbers' stereotype than they aspire to be.
Many/most scenarios still are chaining pretty much all of the treasure bundles to encounter results/completions, but the fact that some of them don't - and 20% of your gold could be randomly hidden in 1 of the 9 locations you're looking in - means that players need to treat every scenarios as if every single nook and cranny could hide something of critical importance.
For Success Conditions (especially Secondary ones) I am ok with not always accomplishing it. In most cases, even if the condition is hard to achieve or gated behind a skill no one in the party may have/be good at, at least it should be clear from the context of the adventure that what you're doing matters (trying to make a politically important ally, examining a ancient text, etc).
The trouble with treasure bundles right now is that they're sometimes able to be missed without even realizing it, which leads to a lot of feel-bads when the party later learns them rolling a 16 in one room cost them 20 gold, when Searching for 20+ in adjacent rooms turned out to not matter with because the secret panel was just in room D.
I do think setting a better baseline expectation level for how treasure bundles are meant to be accrueed/found over the course of a career would be good for both players and authors. But so far I have not seen any real discussion of those expectations from PFS leadership
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As for Hirelings specifically, as an SFS player I find it odd PF2 hirelings are getting such pushback, considering while they are a quite useful boon, I feel SFS Hirelings are far more powerful and yet have existed with minimal controversy for four years now. [ooc]Personally I think SFS' scaling on hirelings could probably be about +1 per tier lower, but given that system makes it harder for about half the core classes to have enough skills to function well outside narrow niches I think its an acceptable tradeoff.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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tl;dr I hope the language about allies, minions, etc gets cleared up. I think there's been a lot of good editing in the online guide so far, and I'm optimistic.
I admit I am rather surprised that the archtype gives you a familiar even if you already have one, unlike (for example) the familiar master archetype. Would it work to change your wizard thesis?
Short of that I think your option is to convince them to exempt familiars. (I have no idea if they would be open to that.)
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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You're wrong. If you read the current organized play guide it limits you to 5 slots total. One is a Faction boon, one an advanced boon, and 3 generic boon slots that CAN be used for up to 3 hirelings.
Hirelings let you take additional skills for a cost so low as to be essentially free. You can buy everything a given faction offers for ~40 fame. By 6th level you have 72 fame meaning you could have a hireling in every single skill and every thing your faction offers.
1. Advanced boon slots can be used for generic boons.
2. One of the first things that got posted is that boon slots are going away. You can bring an unlimited number of boons to the table.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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As for Hirelings specifically, as an SFS player I find it odd PF2 hirelings are getting such pushback, considering while they are a quite useful boon, I feel SFS Hirelings are far more powerful and yet have existed with minimal controversy for four years now. [ooc]Personally I think SFS' scaling on hirelings could probably be about +1 per tier lower, but given that system makes it harder for about half the core classes to have enough skills to function well outside narrow niches I think its an acceptable tradeoff.
I should point out that you can only have 1 hireling per PC in SFS, because they only have one ally slot.
(Not ignoring the rest of your post, just that was the fast bit to respond to. :) )
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I've been campaigning on these board for more explicit statements of expected levels of treasure bundles for quite some time. Every since the scenarios started to feel like they were hiding treasure bundles behind exceedingly hard checks, or odd choices. I've more or less accepted that 8 appears to be the 'expected' value these days, in spite of 10 being the expected values for the first half of season 1. What changed, I'm not sure, I think it should have been communicated.
Is it because the baseline changed?
Is it because 3-6s, and 5-8s had a different baseline than 1-4s and the latter half of the season had more of those?
When it comes to secondary conditions/bonus reputation conditions, I do feel those are generally seen as 'success' not critical success, and if you're arguing that getting full reputation should be an unusual circumstance, I think that's suggesting a rather massive shift in expectations, that again needs to be communicated explicitly, not implicity.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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1-08
As for the body, it is clearly visible from where the PCs enter, and there is no reason they have to stop and search it then and there. I would expect a table that was chasing that person to chase them, deal with them, then double back to search the body.
As for the King, he is the "king" of a single trade town on a river that just went through 2 military coups. I'm not sure he has a whole lot more than 2 treasure bundles to give. You are lucky you didn't just wind up with a nice ribbon and the kings thanks.... :)
1-20
I know a *lot* of scenarios, you get the treasure bundle for *finding* the items, not just for taking them.
1-17
Many/most scenarios still are chaining pretty much all of the treasure bundles to encounter results/completions, but the fact that some of them don't - and 20% of your gold could be randomly hidden in 1 of the 9 locations you're looking in - means that players need to treat every scenarios as if every single nook and cranny could hide something of critical importance.
I *think* that is meant to encourage the "Explore" part of "Explore, Report, Cooperate. In theory, pathfinders *should* be sticking their nose into every crack and crevice they come across. Because any single nook or cranny could hide an important clue or a lead to a new adventure.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Also, this is the point where I make the point that *almost no one* reads the whole guide.
From the current guide:
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.
This language got strengthened and highlighted in the new guide, to point out that the campaign rewards are actually balanced around 8-9 treasure bundles.
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.
So, applying this to:
1-08
1-20
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I've been campaigning on these board for more explicit statements of expected levels of treasure bundles for quite some time.
It has been in the guide for a very long time. I would have to dive back into my revisions text to see how long a time it has been.
Is it because the baseline changed?
Is it because 3-6s, and 5-8s had a different baseline than 1-4s and the latter half of the season had more of those?
It is because dialing in precise levels of success without knowing what people are going to build before hand is not easy. And is even harder given the wide variability in resources between 1-2 and 3-4. I suspect that, especially early on, they were worried about trying to make the average 9, and accidentally making the average 7...
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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When it comes to secondary conditions/bonus reputation conditions, I do feel those are generally seen as 'success' not critical success, and if you're arguing that getting full reputation should be an unusual circumstance, I think that's suggesting a rather massive shift in expectations, that again needs to be communicated explicitly, not implicity.
More of "Getting secondary success *and* all 10 treasure bundles" should be regarded as a crit success.
I have no *idea* what Paizo's baseline for how often secondary success conditions should happen. My *personal* baseline, based on what I have seen, is about 9 out of every 10 times, you should get them.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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By the way, based on:
Treasure by Level (CRB pg 508)
The average price of a free consumable,
The Average day job (assuming you never go beyond trained, and only have a +2 in the stat, rising to +3.
Then the average number of treasure bundles you should be getting to preserve the recommended treasure is 8.133
If you throw in the fact that consumables you find and use during the adventure do not reduce your rewards, that number decreases substantially.
Working that the other direction, a PC who earns all 10 treasure bundles, every scenario, will, at 9th level, have received 475 gp *more* than they should.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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First Jared, thank you for reading all of and replying to my comment.
Many/most scenarios still are chaining pretty much all of the treasure bundles to encounter results/completions, but the fact that some of them don't - and 20% of your gold could be randomly hidden in 1 of the 9 locations you're looking in - means that players need to treat every scenarios as if every single nook and cranny could hide something of criticalI *think* that is meant to encourage the "Explore" part of "Explore, Report, Cooperate. In theory, pathfinders *should* be sticking their nose into every crack and crevice they come across. Because any single nook or cranny could hide an important clue or a lead to a new adventure.
I agree with that in concept, but the implementation runs into two issues. One is on a narrative/playtime level: while in a video-game RPG players are trained over the years to go to every single out-of-the-way-cranny possible to find random hidden items, at the table searching each closet exhaustively slows down the flow and takes away focus from the actual more interesting Story of the adventure
Second is mechanically with Hero Points. Hero Points are a core integrated part of the game that challenges are designed around and Society Play is aware of and has codified. If a party has five similar rooms to search in a keep - let's say two with interesting but non-vital plot clues and one with one or more treasure bundles hidden within - it becomes a guessing game as to when a low or, even worse borderline, roll might be worth expending a Hero Point for or when it would be a waste of that limited resource. Mechanically the game is about players making choices, and if treasure bundle's placements are inconsistent then the meaningfulness of those player's choices is decreased.
This language got strengthened and highlighted in the new guide, to point out that the campaign rewards are actually balanced around 8-9 treasure bundles.
Is the new guide explicitly setting an expectation of 8-9 bundles an average Adventure? If so, on the one hand I appreciate some specific guidelines. On the other, that seems starkly low. Generally in discussions like this about missing out on full rewards, people have tended to mention 9/10 times you should get full rewards (in theory; again, in practice I disagree this is true).
But even then that '1/10 time' without full rewards would still have something - let's say in one out of every 10 adventures you miss 4 treasure bundles. That would still be an expected 96% Treasure return rate. The campaign being 'balanced around 8-9 treasure bundles' is something that is a far sharper reduction in expected gold than I've eer heard expressed, and if in the Guide makes me wonder if we should be bracing for a lot harder-to-get Treasure bundles in the coming season.
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Semi-tangent: for what its worth, I'd be a strong proponent of authors seeding more than 10 treasure bundles in scenarios, with a cap of 10 for end-of-adventure rewards still being in effect. That way you could still have rewards or valuables/connections dependent on obscure skills or hidden in random areas, but because there were more opportunities for the party to discover them or the PC to put their Basketweaving Lore to work it would lessen to amount a missed bundle just feels like bad luck and not bad choices.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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First Jared, thank you for reading all of and replying to my comment.
I agree with that in concept, but the implementation runs into two issues. One is on a narrative/playtime level: while in a video-game RPG players are trained over the years to go to every single out-of-the-way-cranny possible to find random hidden items, at the table searching each closet exhaustively slows down the flow and takes away focus from the actual more interesting Story of the adventureMany/most scenarios still are chaining pretty much all of the treasure bundles to encounter results/completions, but the fact that some of them don't - and 20% of your gold could be randomly hidden in 1 of the 9 locations you're looking in - means that players need to treat every scenarios as if every single nook and cranny could hide something of criticalI *think* that is meant to encourage the "Explore" part of "Explore, Report, Cooperate. In theory, pathfinders *should* be sticking their nose into every crack and crevice they come across. Because any single nook or cranny could hide an important clue or a lead to a new adventure.
Honestly, I think 1-20 did this the best, with high successes on the main path giving you access to the specific cubby hole where the treasures might be.
If a party has five similar rooms to search in a keep - let's say two with interesting but non-vital plot clues and one with one or more treasure bundles hidden within - it becomes a guessing game as to when a low or, even worse borderline, roll might be worth expending a Hero Point for or when it would be a waste of that limited resource.
I think that is a good point designers should consider when writing scenarios.
This language got strengthened and highlighted in the new guide, to point out that the campaign rewards are actually balanced around 8-9 treasure bundles.Is the new guide explicitly setting an expectation of 8-9 bundles an average Adventure? If so, on the one hand I appreciate some specific guidelines. On the other, that seems starkly low.
Not *quite* what the guide says. The campaign rewards are *balanced around* 8-9 treasure bundles. That is to say "If your character gets 8-9 treasure bundles every game, you will not fall behind the wealth by level curve, and will not fall into a downward wealth spiral where your inability to to afford the gear you need prevents you from succeeding at missions."
Now, given that the principles of game design say that "the majority of players should have a good time" that would imply that most if not all pcs should earn *at least* 8-9 treasure bundles on average.
So assuming a bell curve, if 90% of PCs are earning 8-9 or more bundles on average, 50% of PCs are probably earning 9 or even 9-10 treasure bundles on average.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Semi-tangent: for what its worth, I'd be a strong proponent of authors seeding more than 10 treasure bundles in scenarios, with a cap of 10 for end-of-adventure rewards still being in effect. That way you could still have rewards or valuables/connections dependent on obscure skills or hidden in random areas, but because there were more opportunities for the party to discover them or the PC to put their Basketweaving Lore to work it would lessen to amount a missed bundle just feels like bad luck and not bad choices.
I think there are a few scenarios that have variations on this, where there are two opportunities to earn treasure bundles, and you can succeed at *either* one, but not both.
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Treasure bundles honestly still feel like the old season 0-4 faction missions to me. The game just slows down for a few minutes while you make an otherwise meaningless skill check to see if you find the thing that's going to give you full rewards. It's find the MacGuffin all over again, only we're not being told what the MacGuffin is that we're looking for. On top of that, several of the treasure bundles have needlessly specific descriptions that GMs seem to feel compelled to read, giving the momentary impression the items are much more important than they actually are before saying "these represent 2 treasure bundles." In all of this simplification of the rewards systems, I would not mind if treasure bundles got simplified to if you're successful at all conditions, you get full gold. If you're unsuccessful at the secondary, you're docked X amount and just stop spending time on trying to figure out new ways to say you get 1.4 gold (or whatever by level).
Venture-Captain, Germany—Rhein Main South
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Jared one of the bigger Problems is, that we have FAR too many skillchallanges that either force you to roll or expect mathematically that everyone can roll (with a reasonable chance at a sucess/crit sucess) to succeed and a lot of these only give you options you need to be trained in (and not saves/perception)
This could be fixed somewhat with hirelings but is bad gamedesign (which I express in all reviews for these scenarios. So now you are telling players "here I take away the thing that allowed you to lessen the impact of designdecissions that you do not like".
Also the sentence " 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. " reads to me as a non native speaker that if everything goes "normal" you get full rewards and the sentences afterward suggest that if you fail hard you might get less treasure.
And this is how it also was in PF1/SFS so it is not wierd for people having this expectation. Also some kind of anecdotal information: Players react FAR worse to loosing money than to loosing out the second sucess/prestige/fame.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I think people are missing the point that it is not (and never has been, not since the first days of PFS1) intended that every PC acquire *every* secondary success condition and full cash rewards every single adventure.
No, people read the Guide and it said:
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.
Don't blame people for believing the Guide. You might not get it every adventure, but it's likely that you will get it on most of them. It certainly doesn't mean "likely to get only 80% of that".
I'm fine with re-setting expectations, I think a standard of earning 8 bundles on a typical run is good, makes getting more than that sweeter. But then you need to call that out clearly, and probably in the Player Basics section, not buried in the GM Basics section. This is after all about player expectations.
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You're wrong.
Hirelings let you take additional skills for a cost so low as to be essentially free. You can buy everything a given faction offers for ~40 fame. By 6th level you have 72 fame meaning you could have a hireling in every single skill and every thing your faction offers.
I had a very interesting (to me :-)) epiphany as I read this.
Personally, I love to play skilled characters. Always have. Even in PF1 I spent considerable resources to get skills onto my character. One thing I like about PF2 is that it is comparatively easier to be quite skilled.
So the emphasis on skill challenges is something I like. And the new hireling rule is something I can live with.
But you're absolutely correct that others have a different playstyle. And that other playstyle needs to be catered to as well.
You're also correct that my skilled characters currently have an advantage over an unskilled character. I'm not sure that advantage is quite enough (I AM still spending resources that they are not) but it IS in the right ballpark.
You've changed my mind on multiple hirelings. They SHOULD be allowed. My preferred style doesn't need it but other styles do need it and PFS is all about catering to as many styles as possible.
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475 gp isn't that much at 9th level. It's 25 gp more than 3 scrolls or enough for a single level 7 item.
I agree with simplifying gold reward to a set amount based on your level. I have had enough games get slowed down both as a player and GM by other players wanting to make sure we've looked in every nook and cranny (even when it makes no narrative sense). Just award each player what the OP wants us to earn. It's basically a salary, after all.
Some treasure bundles are based on finding things, some treasure bundles are abstract effects based on results of skill checks, some treasure bundles are results of success conditions, and they get mixed and matched within the same scenarios, so you never know how you're supposed to earn them or if you have them.
I would go so far as to say the gold reward should be static for completion of a scenario, regardless of success because after playing 7 scenarios, it is economically advantageous to rebuild if you've been getting less than full rewards.
But the main suggestion is to fix the gold rewards at what OP expects the player to earn then no more controversy.
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Also, this is the point where I make the point that *almost no one* reads the whole guide.
You're absolutely correct, and that will never change.
Which is why it is incredibly important to clearly emphasize something like this in the sections that every PLAYER is going to read. The sections you quoted are in the portion that only the GM is likely to read.
That said, I like the new wording.
I would like to explicitly acknowledge that we're asking for a lot (we want SO many things emphasized :-)). Please know that most of us DO appreciate all the work that you're doing and that our suggestions are intended to be helpful and not criticism. I know that in the heat of the moment they don't always come across that way.
But doing hard things is why you get the big bucks for this job, right :-)? For those with a different sense of humour than mine, that was a joke. I am very much aware that JTT and the others are unpaid volunteers.
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But the main suggestion is to fix the gold rewards at what OP expects the player to earn then no more controversy.
I don't want to go that far. I want my build decisions and my character decisions to matter. Even if you think of it as salary I want to work for a company that rewards effort and merit :-).
Personally, my ideal is that
1) Paizo clearly articulates it's expectations AND implements things so those expectations are met
2) rewards are lost in a way that feels "fair" to me. Losing due to bad luck (in terms of party composition or actual dice rolls) is ok, losing to not having very good luck is not.
3) Accessing the rewards should be based on PCs acting like Pathfinders on a mission. If a character misses a reward because they didn't do something the player reaction should be "yeah, that makes sense. We oopsed" or "Oh well, we got unlucky" and NOT "is Paizo crazy? Why would we have done that?".
In fairness, I think Paizo generally does a very good job of the last 2 and, ironically, this makes their failures all the more glaring. In at least some of the examples above I think it was GM failure at least as much as poor writing. The clear cut examples where I think scenarios were wrong are quite rare.