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The official campaign position is that the Organized Play experience is designed to be one of exploration and discovery. Finding something on a chronicle that you can't normally access should be a pleasant surprise, not something that is necessary to play the character you built. On the mechanical side: if you know you can get an item by playing a particular scenario, there's not much point to restricting access in the first place.
As has been stated upthread, the Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign is one in which we hope that players are not reading ahead (either adventures or Chronicle sheets) in order to cherry-pick adventures based on a checklist of monsters they'd like to encounter or equipment they'd like to receive. As such, we consider discussion of such spoilers to be against the spirit of the game.
Since that was originally written the campaign has gotten much better at putting in ways to transfer a found item/special archetype/etc. from one of your characters to another. To use your example, if you play a scenario and get access to a Fighting Fan, that would encourage you to transfer the fan to a new character specializing in a Fighting Fan. A character you wouldn't have been able to make if you hadn't unexpectedly found that Fan.
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Since that was originally written the campaign has gotten much better at putting in ways to transfer a found item/special archetype/etc. from one of your characters to another. To use your example, if you play a scenario and get access to a Fighting Fan, that would encourage you to transfer the fan to a new character specializing in a Fighting Fan. A character you wouldn't have been able to make if you hadn't unexpectedly found that Fan.
And to add, it will take AcP points to do this. If the item desired is in the CRB, the Avid Collector boon from AcP (takes 20) can also be used.
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In the case of the katana, it's pretty easy to piece that one together based on posts from Michael Sayre (who all but directly spoils what scenario it's in). For the other stuff... it generally comes down to discouraging chronicle fishing, which happens anyway, but is something that's generally been seen as a negative for organized play in the past.
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I'm actually looking at the broader picture.
"Boon fishing" has had a negative connotation in a specific context - that boons primarily came from specific adventures, and that there was an idea of people only playing those specific adventures to get the best rewards, or selecting a specific character to stack those boons onto.
Take away the premise - if now boons (or the best boons) come from generic AcP (whether it's a good idea or not, that seems to be the way it's going), does "boon fishing" have the same negative connotations?
Put a different way, if people now have a legal mechanism to consolidate all the game-breaking boons in one character (again, putting aside the question of whether that's a good idea or not, that seem to be the way it's going), how many rules do people want to stop or slow that?
To be clear, I don't have a strong opinion on the actual answer (or on the digitization trend in general). I'm just bringing up the question.
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I think we're envisioning different implementations from Paizo and we can't know what's likely. I'm still expecting most of the 'interesting' boons to still be from 0 cost Chronicles boons; rather than the general purpose ACP ones. But we're likely to have fewer Chronicles Boon than before just due to their development cost.
SO I don't think the premise has changed.
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Boon types. In the future, we intend to have boons that cost nothing and unlock for characters by playing scenarios, achieving recognition levels from factions (to account for the Faction slot boons) or by some other measurable parameter (membership in an order?) and boons that cost AcP and can be purchased by any character on an account. Some of the current Fame cost boons will wind up in each of the pools. That is something we are actively determining.
Chronicle and Recognition level boons will be character-specific.
AcP boons will be purchased using your pooled AcP for use by any of your characters.
I don't think the chronicle boons are supposed to all be viewable like they are now. I believe the idea is that you will select your character and then the list of chronicle boons available to that particular character will appear. Just not quite implemented properly yet.
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I'm still expecting most of the 'interesting' boons to still be from 0 cost Chronicles boons; rather than the general purpose ACP ones. But we're likely to have fewer Chronicles Boon than before just due to their development cost.
Wait, do you think that the Chronicle boons right now are more interesting than the AcP boons right now?
Because if so, that's probably a more fundamental discrepancy.
I'm way more interested in how to get access to Leshy in general than the specific Leshy heritage that one of the scenarios gives out. So maybe that's it, I'm just not very protective of the Chronicle boons because they don't really appeal to me.
*shrug*
This isn't the hill I'm going to die on. I maintain boon secrecy, but only because I think it's courteous to others who really seem to care.
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The ACP ones are advertised and generally static. You can look over them and see what your saving for and are completely irreverent to the discussion of boon fishing. The Campaign ones are "new" when they come out, they generate buzz. They aren't going away, and should still be secret. Its comparing apples and oranges.
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The ACP ones are advertised and generally static. You can look over them and see what your saving for and are completely irreverent to the discussion of boon fishing.
That's my whole point. I (personally) think all the interesting boons are AcP-based. The barrier to me boon-fishing is that there's a boon fish market selling cleaned, gutted, and scaled boon fish right next to some dirty old boon pond that everyone seems intent on boon fishing in to see what they might pull up.
So I don't think it's a big deal if the Chronicle boons are public information.
If you think that the boon pond is stock full of live, fresh fish and the boon fish market that I love is full of dead, decaying, day-old fish, that's fine; and, it explains the fundamental discrepancy in why "boon fishing" is a 4-letter word for some and not for me.
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It's helpful to take a step back from personal opinion about whether options are interesting, cool, powerful, or build-defining and try to answer the "why" question. To quote myself from earlier
If you know you can get an item by playing a particular scenario, there's not much point to restricting access in the first place.
We have to start with one assumption here, and that is "The access system is an integral part of Pathfinder 2 and is not going to be abandoned." You may personally hate the fact that you can't just go out and get any uncommon or rare option as soon as you have the money/level. But abandoning the system is a huge change that is not going to happen in PFS.
With that assumption, there's two ways to gain access to options: AcP and chronicle rewards. The AcP access rewards fall into two categories
2) You gain access to one uncommon item or spell from a carefully curated list.
Chronicle rewards, though, can give rewards that vary wildly. And that are very specific to the adventure you just completed. Hypothetical rewards might include
2) Access to the mind reading spell.
3) Access to the kukri.
Or things that aren't - strictly speaking - just an access reward
4) You may take the Fighter feat Reactive Shield as a general feat.
5) You may take the Hellknight Armiger Dedication feat even if you are not trained in heavy armor.
6) You learn how to read (but not speak) Jistkan for free.
7) You become trained in Ninshubarian Lore. If you are already trained in Ninshubarian Lore, your level increases to expert.
So what's the difference? With the AcP rewards you can say "hey, I can play a Leshy!" That doesn't define anything about your build other than your ancestry. If I know which chronicles have my hypothetical rewards, though, I can make a build that completely bypasses many of the access requirements. "OK, I want to make a rogue that uses a kukri and is an Order of the Godclaw Hellknight. It doesn't really matter which ancestry I choose since I know that I can play scenario X to get access to the kukri and scenario Y so I don't have to worry about that pesky armor proficiency requirement. Sweet! That would have cost me at least three feats otherwise."
Summary So that's really the whole point. If I know what's on the chronicles I could plan to stack up a ton of "bypasses" and avoid spending the feats/resources that someone else might need to. Or, relatedly, spend feats in a way that makes no sense unless I'm preparing for something I know I will be getting access to from a future chronicle. Either of which makes the access system mostly irrelevant.
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If I know what's on the chronicles I could plan to stack up a ton of "bypasses" and avoid spending the feats/resources that someone else might need to. Or, relatedly, spend feats in a way that makes no sense unless I'm preparing for something I know I will be getting access to from a future chronicle.
Can you name a current Chronicle boon that is powerful enough, or powerful enough in conjunction with a current AcP boon, that if you knew about it in July 2019, would have built your characters differently?
I can't. I haven't played them all - I haven't played any of the 5-8s (#1-21, #1-24, #1-25), and I haven't finished #1-11, #2-01, or #2-02, but I have Chronicles from all the other scenarios, so like 21 of 27 or something. With maybe the exception of Valais's Assurance, I don't find any of them exciting.
To be clear, I have used the rebuild boon on one character (in August 2020), so I understand exactly how valuable these things could be. In the end, my knowing what the vast majority of boons are and then building a character from scratch with a year of foreknowledge cost me about 40 gp (plus 20 AcP if I did it after September 1). So I also know exactly how much these things cost.
The biggest piece of information I wish I knew? That the Rebuild Boon (an AcP boon) was going to exist. Because right before they announced it, I had spent 21 days of downtime retraining my school and a feat, all of which I could have done for free if I had known the boon was coming.
If there were any Chronicle boons or items that I thought were great, I can spend 20-ish AcP and put them on the character I want, so that's no longer an issue.
Boon fishing was a much larger problem in PFS1. I more or less agree with the argument that discouraging boon fishing was worth effort.
1. The Chronicle Boons were much more variable in scope.
2. The most powerful Chronicle Boons were very, very powerful.
3. There was no mechanism to transfer something from one character to another, so characters got "stuck" with boons that would have been very powerful for a different class.
4. At the end, there was 11-12 years of stuff to cherry pick from.
In PFS2 ... I'm decidedly meh.
1'. The Chronicle Boons are pretty uniform in scope.
2'. The most powerful Chronicle boons are not powerful.
3'. Character-to-character transfers can be purchased with AcP.
4'. There's only 1 season to cherry pick from.
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I certainly built my GM baby based on Q2's boon.
I can see people intentionally building to get the most out of 1-17's boon and 1-24's boon.
I believe that they are intentionally making an effort to not produce an "I've got to have it!" boon (Q2 can come pretty close for certain builds), which eliminates some of the desire for boon fishing.
However, they are also routinely spoiled in other places--there are at least two people publicly advertising boon cards that spoil every boon there is. So, it's not like anyone is stopping you.
What people are asking here is either to not have their feelings hurt by being told their telling other people about chronicle rewards is wrong or to "force" people to tell them what's on a chronicle (because they've been told no by someone who answered it was a spoiler as their reason for not telling the person). Either way, it's not an issue worth wasting your thought or breath on. A person will tell you or they won't tell you. Just be adult about the response you get.
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Meh, in a world where scenarios are open by anyone to buy and GMs often run before they play, knowing that access to a particular piece of treasure is on a chronicle sheet is rarely, if ever a spoiler. If someone asks me where they can find access to said item and I know a scenario that does so, I will likely share it. There is a big difference between “hey, do you know if there are any chronicles that provide access to kukri” vs. “hey, I need to pick an energy for my resistance. I’m playing #-## on Saturday. Should I chose fire?”
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I don't like that response because it encourages people to read the scenario before they play it. Not to mention its not very helpful and could be received as rude. If they are being a jerk about boon fishing, that's one thing, but in my experience most people who ask about boons are simply asking because someone told them about a benefit that would be suited for their character and they just want to know how to obtain it. A perfectly reasonable question.
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Its certainly not "lazy" to hear about a boon and ask where to find it. Not everyone has access to all scenarios including scenarios, quests, APs, modules, etc. and even if they did, do you really want them going through all of them to find the boon in question? That would create waay more spoilers than just answering the question in the first place.
I have more than once discovered a boon from another player during a game that I had never heard of before and wondered where it came from. If you don't want to share, no worries, but let's not act like we are sharing top secret information. If the developers didn't want us to get the boon, they wouldn't have put it on the chronicle sheet. For some people, knowing about a boon that would fit their character's build can actually encourage more play which is something we all want.
Not to mention, now that all the boons are in the AcP list, whether or not you have credit for said adventure, most of this will be moot anyway. If I want to know how to gain access to the Cyclopean language, I need to go no further than the boon list to see it is available from 2-03. I cannot decide if I like that idea or not. On the one hand, it does preemptively reveal all the boons, some of which could be spoilers. OTOH, having a list does virtually eliminate the need to ask someone and put them in an uncomfortable position if their local lodge is militant about not sharing chronicle rewards.
Unrelated...my OCD really wishes there was some organization to the boon listings. Maybe its just me, but I lose focus and have a hard time scanning the data in its randomly haphazard order. List them alphabetically, or in escalating AcP cost, etc. Something, anything is better than this.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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If peeps want to know what boons are on what chronicles, the easy answer in my opinion is, "You can buy the scenarios on Paizo's website. They are only about $5 a pop. Find out for yourself."
You mean the boons that are only going to show up until after you run the game?
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Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Bellevue
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I can go either way on this debate.
As someone who GMs much more than plays, when I play I enjoy doing so in a scenario I know nothing about. Getting the chronicle at the end with a cool boon is like unwrapping a present.
Of course that means that those boons sometimes end up an a character that can't use it. I can always pick a more suitable character to credit when I later GM the scenario. Plus 2nd ed now has a means to transfer through ACP.
So I appreciate the no spoilers policy.
That said, my Cavalier picked up a really cool named (but broken) sword in a certain PFS 1st ed scenario. The sword is unfixable in any normal PFS way. Given that there are 11 seasons of scenarios and six seasons were published after that scenario, I don't think it was unreasonable for me to ask "How do I get it fixed."
I still had to play several levels worth of scenarios before playing the sequel. So it wasn't so much a short cut as providing a direction to my quest.
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You mean the boons that are only going to show up until after you run the game?
Not sure what you mean here. I have boons in my list from [presumably] all scenarios not just the ones I have played. I’ve played all the scenarios up to 2-02, bit 2-03 is listed. Also, I have only played quests thru #9 (IIRC), but I have the boons for all them.
It appears they are not gating the list behind reporting, or at least the scripting is not working correctly yet. Due to Paizo’s silence, dunno which is the case.
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I couldn't care less if people spoil scenarios for themselves. As long as they don't make the spoiling my problem. Note, making the spoiling my problem is not an issue with the concept it is a problem with the player.
Also, if peeps are buying scenarios to spoil or boon fish, that means that money is going to the PFS2, which is very good. Because I have never seen the "you have to own the book" rule enforced, I have no problem encouraging people to buy the scenarios.
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Right, so can we agree that:
(1) a player can ask where to find a boon
(2) a player can answer the question or choose not to
(3) a player should not be vilified for asking the question
(4) a player should not be vilified for either answering or refusing to answer the question
Seems reasonable for all involved
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Right, so can we agree that:
(1) a player can ask where to find a boon
(2) a player can answer the question or choose not to
(3) a player should not be vilified for asking the question
(4) a player should not be vilified for either answering or refusing to answer the questionSeems reasonable for all involved
Reasonable or not, (4) is different from current policy, which is to frown on answering.
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Try to go too fast, and you get a gatecrash.
Tell that to OP and their rapid fire house rules these past 2 weeks... but I digress.
That's exactly what TwilightKnight is doing: He's presenting an argument that he hopes everyone can agree with. And I think what he's summarized is perfectly reasonable and facilitates a respectful community.
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what TwilightKnight is doing: He's presenting an argument that he hopes everyone can agree with. And I think what he's summarized is perfectly reasonable and facilitates a respectful community.
I agree, but nobody should implement that proposal until everybody implements that proposal. The danger is that some people start doing what they think is fine, and people who {don't agree / didn't read this thread / wait for official word from Paizo} chastise them anyway, leading to unnecessary arguments.
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There has never been a written rule. This is just a community norm. Some local group in rural Kansas could be spoiling chronicles to their friends left and right and nobody on this board knows.
The broader rule is that: 1) you can't control other people, 2) you can control your reactions to other people.
So if Bob asks, "I heard there's a chronicle that grants access to fire poi. What scenario is that in?"
Dan can respond, "I'm not going to tell you because I think that ruins the spirit of the game."
Dan should not respond, "That's chronicle fishing and a big No-No, you lazy little scumbucket!"
Eric can respond, "It's the first chronicle in Extinction Curse (note I'm writing this before Extinction Curse has been sanctioned)."
Dan should not respond, "Hey! Don't tell him! He's lazy and you're ruining the game for everyone you son of a goat!"
Dan could respond, "Hey. I don't think you should be posting chronicle information in the public forum. If you think it's OK to tell people, please do it in private (PM)."
That is more what TwilightKnight is talking about. If that needs community consensus to "implement," then we have bigger problems than chronicle fishing.
EDIT: Ninja'd by TwilightKnight, but I'm leaving this here because some people need concrete examples.
I wonder whether mentioning regions or ethnic groups would be permissible? For example, someone who wants access to katanas might reasonably inquire about PFS adventures where you visit Minkai or encounter Minkaians. The answer to that question is potentially useful for getting access to katanas, even if the adventures in question don't perfectly line up with making katanas accessible (as you could theoretically have adventures where you gain access to katanas without encountering anyone from Minkai, or you could encounter people from Minkai without gaining access to katanas).
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The problem is being too assertive about it, like how TwilightKnight...
In what world is "hey, do you know how/where I might gain access to a katana?" considered too assertive? Its a simply question. You certainly have the right to answer it or not, but you are not empowered to be a jerk about it. Period.
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This is the kind of response where it's clear the topic reached a dead end.My brain = broke
When the proposal is people should be decent to one another and the answer is “agree to disagree,” then, yes, the discussion ran its course well before I was astounded by that answer.
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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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Hmm pauses for a moment, wondering if she is the tone police.
I don't like the term 'tone police' because it imparts the concept that requesting a civil discussion is somehow silencing the opposition. I believe that maintaining civility is the exact opposite:
1) Being willing to assume the best of people, even when they're slightly grumpy. Maybe they had a bad day. Maybe this rule change has really hit them hard, emotionally.
2) Keeping the discussion pleasant, so that ideas are heard instead of insults.
3) Making these forums a welcoming place where newcomers decide that they can take the risk of posting and making their opinions heard.
Civility is the best way to get your ideas across. When we snipe at each other, the discussion is no longer about the original topic -- it becomes about our own insecurities and personality clashes.
So yes, I want us to be civil and awesome and understanding with one another. Even when there is nothing that we agree upon. Tone matters. It always has.
Hmm