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I am not trying to be bitter, or even whine about things as they are and have been determined to be for PFS2
However,
I have played Quest 10: The Broken Scales and for two hours of play earned... 1 exp, 1 treasure bundle.
I have played Little Trouble in Big Absalom and for five hours of play earned... 1 exp, 2 treasure bundles.
This morning I had the honor and privilege of playing at a table of an actual PFS2 scenario and for five hours of play earned.... 4 exp, 6 treasure bundles.
Despite this morning's five hours of play being somewhat intense, it was less challenging than either the Quest or the module.
To 'level up' my character to Level 2 will take *at least* another seven hours of play (2 for a Quest, 5 for a Scenario).
That would be a total of 19 hours for 12 exp under ideal circumstances.
Contrasted with the prospect of playing 15 hours for 12 exp under PFS2 (for Scenarios) or PFS1 for 3 exp over three scenarios (or six exp given how some evergreen modules can run).
It doesn't feel like I'm getting anywhere, and it also feels like I have to 'sit' on my IC money (such as the bundles provide) because there's nothing that can be bought to improve survivability while still languising at L1.
The level bump is a novel solution, but ultimately feels like it helps about as much as a 'four player adjustment' from PFS1.
I want to give PFS2 a chance, but it also feels like such a grind that the fun is being sucked out of playing, along with the stressors of 'way overtooled encounters' that L1 characters have to face.
Is it wrong to feel like that?
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FWIW, Quests are designed to be finished in an hour.
Getting 6 Treasure Bundles instead of 10 is rough, but admittedly pretty rare (and I have a good idea which scenario you played).
Big Trouble in Little Absalom, though, is a sore spot for a lot of people. You're not alone there.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Quests grant the equvalent of 2.5 treasure bundles, not 1.
This.
Little Trouble in Big Absolom is puzzling to me, as even with extensive roleplay, I don't think I have ever seen it take more than 3 hours.
Online play seems to add ~1/2 - 1 hour to any game unless the players are very comfortable and prepared. That is an online play thing, not a PFS2 thing.
That said, some of the 1st season PFS 2 games go way over time. Some of them are far too short. That is the trouble with developing for a new system.
It's not "wrong" to feel like that, that is how you feel and your feelings are valid. But maybe branch out and play with other people? The fact that you have had level bump in (it sounds like) every game except the pregen one may be part of the problem. (Compare to playing high tier with a level 1 in PFS1!)
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Just finished Bounty 2 after 1.5 hours of play.
The only reason we finished without a TPK was because the Bounty was called on account of time.
We were all L1, no pregens, playing L1 characters for the Bounty.
The only level bump was for Catastrophe's Spark (We had two L1, and three L4 characters present)
All the tables have been other different players and characters.
The bulk of my play experience has been at a con this weekend.
I have played Quest 10: The Broken Scales and for two hours of play earned... 1 exp, 1 treasure bundle previous to this convention.
I have played Little Trouble in Big Absalom and for five hours of play earned... 1 exp, 2 treasure bundles.
This morning I had the honor and privilege of playing at a table of an actual PFS2 scenario and for five hours of play earned.... 4 exp, 6 treasure bundles.
Despite this morning's five hours of play being somewhat intense, it was less challenging than either the Quest or the module.
Currrent exp is 7 after 13.5 hours of play. The only reason it went more quickly during the Bounty was due to a master-class GM.
5 exp to go to 2nd Level, or roughly 7 more hours at current rate.
If the character I'm playing dies before 2nd Level I'm pretty sure that'll be it for PFS2 for me.
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Quests and Bounties (and scenarios with only one big fight) are excessively challenging.
Quests and Bounties are designed knowing that all your 1/day powers and all your spells are going into one battle, and it makes it hard.
Everything is also designed for 4 players. No every challenge scales well to merely more people, and tgat is exacerbated when you have one battle.
Your scenario also had 22 CP, which is High Tier+, so even with the bump, it's going to feel like a pointless slog fir the L1s.
I know you're limited in what's available, but the more measured scenarios and tighter level spread will give a better experience than Quests/Bounties or playing up.
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I must admit that the few times I've played where there is a significant gap in levels within the group the lower levels don't have as good a time of it.
With the way the game is designed, the increases arising from the challenge points system to make the scenario a challenge for the higher level characters also make it very difficult for the lower level ones to suceed. This is especially true at 1st as the gap between you and a 3rd level or higher character is huge.
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Little Trouble in Big Absolom is puzzling to me, as even with extensive roleplay, I don't think I have ever seen it take more than 3 hours.
It took us about 5 hours (online) for the two parts.
It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I did it. But from a cost/benefit analysis it certainly wasn't worth it.
As Andrew says, the same is true for modules and APs. Even if you ignore the long lag until you can get ANY points as you wait for it to become sanctioned you get something less than 1/2 of the PFS rewards.
Partly that is because Modules and APs allow the players to go off the rails. As a GM I really don't care as long as everybody is having fun.
But it took 8 4+ hour sessions to run The Slithering. I could have pushed and got that down to maybe 6. But that is still 1/2 the rewards.
Basically, if you want to maximize your PFS rewards per time played. stick to scenarios.
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I must admit that the few times I've played where there is a significant gap in levels within the group the lower levels don't have as good a time of it.
With the way the game is designed, the increases arising from the challenge points system to make the scenario a challenge for the higher level characters also make it very difficult for the lower level ones to suceed. This is especially true at 1st as the gap between you and a 3rd level or higher character is huge.
I try very hard not to be the player who brings a scenario from low tier to high tier for this very reason.
But I think that the level bump mechanic is nothing short of brilliant. Its not perfect, of course, but it does a good job of letting the low level character actually contribute.
In many cases a lowest level character with a level bump contributes as much or more as a second lowest level character. And raises the challenge level by less to boot :-)
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Little Trouble in Big Absolom is puzzling to me, as even with extensive roleplay, I don't think I have ever seen it take more than 3 hours.
It took us about 5 hours (online) for the two parts.
It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I did it. But from a cost/benefit analysis it certainly wasn't worth it.
As Andrew says, the same is true for modules and APs. Even if you ignore the long lag until you can get ANY points as you wait for it to become sanctioned you get something less than 1/2 of the PFS rewards.
Partly that is because Modules and APs allow the players to go off the rails. As a GM I really don't care as long as everybody is having fun.
But it took 8 4+ hour sessions to run The Slithering. I could have pushed and got that down to maybe 6. But that is still 1/2 the rewards.
Basically, if you want to maximize your PFS rewards per time played. stick to scenarios.
APs have *never* been worth it in terms of XP unless you are speed running. I think the assumption is that if you are playing a not Pathfinder society product, you are playing it primarily for the fun of playing that adventure.
The Pathfinder rewards are just a side benefit. (Hence why APs span 3 levels, but only give 1 level of rewards.) If you are just playing it to advance your character, they are not worth it.So don't play them if all you want is to advance your character.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I must admit that the few times I've played where there is a significant gap in levels within the group the lower levels don't have as good a time of it.
With the way the game is designed, the increases arising from the challenge points system to make the scenario a challenge for the higher level characters also make it very difficult for the lower level ones to suceed. This is especially true at 1st as the gap between you and a 3rd level or higher character is huge.
I try very hard not to be the player who brings a scenario from low tier to high tier for this very reason.
But I think that the level bump mechanic is nothing short of brilliant. Its not perfect, of course, but it does a good job of letting the low level character actually contribute.
In many cases a lowest level character with a level bump contributes as much or more as a second lowest level character. And raises the challenge level by less to boot :-)
The right mentor boons can also make a huge difference.
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The right mentor boons can also make a huge difference.I must admit that the few times I've played where there is a significant gap in levels within the group the lower levels don't have as good a time of it.
With the way the game is designed, the increases arising from the challenge points system to make the scenario a challenge for the higher level characters also make it very difficult for the lower level ones to suceed. This is especially true at 1st as the gap between you and a 3rd level or higher character is huge.
I try very hard not to be the player who brings a scenario from low tier to high tier for this very reason.
But I think that the level bump mechanic is nothing short of brilliant. Its not perfect, of course, but it does a good job of letting the low level character actually contribute.
In many cases a lowest level character with a level bump contributes as much or more as a second lowest level character. And raises the challenge level by less to boot :-)
Agreed. One thing that I've been impressed with has been how willing players are to buy (often right then and there) and slot these boons. Usually the low level character has lots of choice.
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I think the thing that really hurts low level play is that there's not really anything cool to spend money on. Weapon, armor, basic gear. Unless you're doing fullplate, shield, and weapon you will have gold just sitting there for most of level 2 barring cheap things you think to pick up. My monk didn't buy anything for about 4 games before hitting 3 and being allowed to get better items.
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Your experience is atypical because you're playing mostly quests and a one-off "adventure mode" scenario. If you play regular scenarios they tend to average between 3.5-4.5 hours in length. You'd be looking at about 1 xp per hour of play, which is really no different than all of 1e PFS.
Unfortunately, this is all I have had the chance to play. As an essential worker with crap hours, I'm lucky to have had those options (everything else local is on days or nights I have to work no saving throw). And yes, that is with Internet availability and access to different locations across the world
I double checked my chronicles. They found all 10 treasure bundles for 2-03 and I send a chronicle for 14GP.
That was a math error on my part trying to convert back and forth between abstract 'Bundles' and gold. Thank you very much for the correction/clarification!
You get A set amount of gold for quests and bounties. How much gold did you get for quest 10? At 1st it should be 3.5 or 2.5 TB on 14 gp.
What we were told was we got one TB, one exp....
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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@Wei Ji:
I'm sorry that you get so little time to play. That is of course going to cause frustrations. But aside from that, I think some of your other problems aren't entirely fair criticisms;
- It takes 3 regular scenarios to level up, just like in PFS1 or SFS. That quests take longer than the intended 1 hour is by now fairly well known and the reason they're being retired.
- Sitting on money on level 1 shouldn't really be that much of an issue. At level 1 you could be spending money on a variety of things, like some of the heavy armors, or a +1 potency rune on your primary weapon. Remember that you can buy items with a level no higher than your own, with a minimum of level 2.
- You're experiencing rough games because you're playing a level 1 character in a high tier party. That's not ideal, just like in SFS and PFS1 it's always better to be in-subtier. A difference of one level does feel a bit more start in second edition though. I would recommend looking for games that are more likely to stay in the 1-2 subtier. In particular, evergreen scenarios tend to stay in that subtier because a lot of people use them to get new characters started. Newest of the new scenarios on the other hand tend to attract the higher level characters and go to high tier, as it seems you experienced.
- As for "overloaded encounters", I think part of this may be edition shock. Compare it to peoples' experience with SFS after PFS1, when in SFS, monsters tend to hit characters a lot more and harder. PFS2 is similar - it doesn't follow a particularly unusual format compared to the base PF2 standard for designing encounters. PF2 is just built with monsters being more aggressive, but characters better able to bounce back from it than in PF1.
Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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Some quests, and the two bounties in particular can be -very rough- for level 1 characters, especially the bounties because they are -level 1 only-. As far as I've seen, going from 4 players to 5 players for a bounty results in a considerably longer time because the adjustment tends to be Elite template on the solo monster, and solo monsters already have good AC and plenty of HP, making them into tanks - hard to hit and can take a lot of punishment - And this in turn leads to the combat portion of the bounty/quest easily getting prolonged well past the 1 hour mark.
And considering that their damage is usually enough to knock out a lvl 1 PC with a good strike (or a crit), the elite adjustment ensures that crits are pretty much always OHKO's and possibly even instant death due to the massive damage rules.
I like the bounties (and hard quests). I think they provide exactly what I hope from a short one-off with good friends who build capable characters.
However, I don't think they are good for new players with new characters or people learning the game. They are literally TPK's waiting to happen.
I would suggest to focus at actual scenarios, if possible. Quests are can be fun, and they are interesting - but in terms of "worth" I think they should give 2xp, 2 reputation, and 5 TB's to make up for the (usually) higher risk and the fact they usually take 1.5 hours.
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But from what is been depicted there, it sounds like Little trouble in big Absalom sounds like a worse waste of time for little reward. Even with speed up session, it doesn't sound a good incentive to play it at all.
There's an entire thread complaining about it. It's the first Free RPG Day adventure to not offer full rewards, but it takes just as long to complete as a full length scenario.
It took my group 5 hours. We actually thought we were done at 3 hours, only to find out after reporting back to our quest givers that there was a Part 2.
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But from what is been depicted there, it sounds like Little trouble in big Absalom sounds like a worse waste of time for little reward. Even with speed up session, it doesn't sound a good incentive to play it at all.
It's definitely NOT worth it from a PFS reward point of view.
But it is a superbly fun scenario with some really engaging PCs (built, of course, somewhat unoptimally).
When I played it the GM allowed us to bring out own characters. I was so taken with the pregen that I just remade it a little mechanically (significantly improving it on the process of course, because Paizo often makes poor mechanical choices).
But the whole table seemed to really enjoy the scenario. And we won fairly handily (I'm not sure if I was the only person who improved the pregens. In fact, I think the GM may have made some slight modifications)
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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But from what is been depicted there, it sounds like Little trouble in big Absalom sounds like a worse waste of time for little reward. Even with speed up session, it doesn't sound a good incentive to play it at all.There's an entire thread complaining about it. It's the first Free RPG Day adventure to not offer full rewards, but it takes just as long to complete as a full length scenario.
Almost every previous free RPG day has offered less than full rewards. And there is always complaining about it.
Almost all of the WBG series offers 1 prestige unless you have a special unlock (like playing it in the store, or having a certain chronicle.)
The same with master of the fallen fortress and everything else that is published by Paizo that is not a Pathfinder Society product.
The difference this time is that they scaled down the XP as well, so that you don't fall behind your level in rewards.