So my group is moving through the AP we're playing quickly. While getting lucky by avoiding most of the battles, they are missing a lot of the loot. Since we're using milestone XP they are of the appropriate level to forge ahead, but they are behind the curve in equipment (like having 30 gp between 4 party members at 3rd level).
I don't want to waste everyone's time to get them to backtrack to unimportant combats that aren't going to challenge them anyway.
In this situation, would you just handwave the treasure? Just give them the stuff they missed but are supposed to get through the adventure?
Can I guess the question here is: "is it important that the treasure is found exactly in the locations they appear in?"
If so, no.
If your players don't enjoy the "meta" of realizing they're forging straight ahead without first ensuring they have the gear for it, it might be that they're mostly interested in the story, not the loot.
You would be entirely within your right to give them the essential gear the game expects them to have in that case. (Basically warriors need +1 weapons, then striking runes, and so on)
Another way of solving this might be to place more gold and valuables instead; giving the players themselves the power to decide when and where they feel the pain of being "under-geared", since when that happens they have the cash to purchase better stuff.
Basically it depends. Are your players experienced videogamers they will already know the importance of keeping up to date with gear... :) And if they're role-players and narrativists you might instead want to cut out that entire part of the game and instead look at this official variant rule:
Automatic Bonus Progression
Good luck with your game!
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If the players skip encounters and get no loot, then they have deal with those consequences by not being equipped to fight harder challenges.
Moving the loot means that their choice to avoid fighting was meaningless because they got the levels and free loot for doing essentially nothing--especially since you categorized their skipping of encounters as lucky.
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Kasoh wrote: If the players skip encounters and get no loot, then they have deal with those consequences by not being equipped to fight harder challenges.
Moving the loot means that their choice to avoid fighting was meaningless because they got the levels and free loot for doing essentially nothing--especially since you categorized their skipping of encounters as lucky.
You do realize you're now taking a certain mindset for granted, right?
I mean outside of the game and "xp meta" it makes perfect sense to avoid combat?
Just like you can support this playing style by using milestone levelling or quest xp, you can support it by awarding treasure independently of having to defeat the critters listed as having it.
Cheers
Kasoh wrote: If the players skip encounters and get no loot, then they have deal with those consequences by not being equipped to fight harder challenges.
Moving the loot means that their choice to avoid fighting was meaningless because they got the levels and free loot for doing essentially nothing--especially since you categorized their skipping of encounters as lucky.
If the game didn't have mandatory math items, I would agree with you. But under this paradigm, this would be punishing them for being lucky/smart. Math items aren't a reward, they're a required part of character progression.
If say, you were using ABP, then yeah! There would be pros and cons for avoiding encounters, but even then, not all treasure is picked off of dead bodies, so they'd have other ways to get rewards too.
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Zapp wrote: Kasoh wrote: If the players skip encounters and get no loot, then they have deal with those consequences by not being equipped to fight harder challenges.
Moving the loot means that their choice to avoid fighting was meaningless because they got the levels and free loot for doing essentially nothing--especially since you categorized their skipping of encounters as lucky.
You do realize you're now taking a certain mindset for granted, right?
I mean outside of the game and "xp meta" it makes perfect sense to avoid combat?
Just like you can support this playing style by using milestone levelling or quest xp, you can support it by awarding treasure independently of having to defeat the critters listed as having it.
Cheers Choices have consequences. That's what playing an RPG is about. If you skip encounters and don't earn treasure then you are not equipped to handle further adventure.
Hopefully you can continue to skip encounters. Otherwise you could be in trouble. In a game where the players are focused on Stealth, this makes for a great dynamic where their foes will surely kill them if caught. That creates real stakes. If that's what you're going for, kudos.
Rewarding players for not doing something isn't how rewards work.
The GM chose an adventure to run, maybe with player input or not, but they certainly agreed to run it. The GM set up the encounters and the players can interact with those encounters however they see fit. Respecting the choices of the players means that bypassing an encounter does not gain them any treasure. The reward was they didn't have to fight those creatures and saved time, resources, and perhaps assuaged their morality.
Steelbro300 wrote: But under this paradigm, this would be punishing them for being lucky/smart. Math items aren't a reward, they're a required part of character progression. Then it wasn't very smart of them, was it?
Skipping to the final encounter in a dungeon and then dying because you weren't prepared for that isn't punishment, that's a natural consequence because the game being played is Pathfinder, not NarrativeFunTimeRPG.
And its not that important anyway. If the PCs skip a level's worth of treasure and suddenly get into fights they are under equipped for, they get the level appropriate treasure when they do fight. So they go from a mundane sword to a +1 striking sword instead of having the interim +1 sword. Those fights are hard, but equally rewarding. Unless they actually skip all the fights and get into a fight they cannot win due to their decisions it'll self correct. And if they do get into a fight and all die, then at least the new PCs will have level appropriate gear.
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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
It is explicitly called out in the core rule book that the GM should be paying attention to how much treasure a party has found and work in ways for players to make up treasure that was missed or given away. As the GM you don’t have to make it obvious, but it makes perfect sense for benefactors to give them extra wealth for managing to accomplish tasks discretely.
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Picking up the treasure and moving it to a non-skippable encounter is a very easy, low-work solution for APs
Instead of the orcs they snuck past having a +1 Longsword and the fey they negotiated with having 2000gp and the boss troll you'll inevitably need to fight at the end of the adventure having 3 Diamonds and a +2 Bow, the boss troll now has 3 Diamonds, a +2 Bow, AND 2000gp AND a +1 Longsword.
Paizo APs assume you won't find all the treasure - that a certain amount of encounters will be bypassed, secret doors won't be found, traps won't be disarmed etc. However, they also all have many places where negotiating successfully with an NPC provides the same XP as defeating them in combat.
It depends on the style of game you want to encourage. If you want combat and killing to be the first response, tell the players they're missing loot, "doing it wrong" and making it harder for themselves. If you want to encourage players to sneak, negotiate, bypass and come up with clever tricks, then move the rewards so they're been equally rewarded. (If your players don't care about treasure period, use Automatic Bonus Progression and call it a day).
Using Milestone levelling means you don't have to worry about whether flying and thus never encountering the Mire Worms on the ground counts for as much XP, or part XP, or no XP (bypassing an encounter they were unaware of) - what matters is that they got to the Troll Cave!
You don't need to do this with every part of treasure - but it's pretty easy to throw the extra items into a dragon horde. Paizo themselves do it in the writing and set up. The wolves that attack you in the forest don't have any treasure (why would they?) but the later dragon has a bigger horde to make up for it.
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I have removed several comments and quoted content. We can disagree without being rude or insulting. Please speak to each other the way you would like to be spoken to.
Depending upon campaign specifics, nothing wrong with having a quest-giver compliment the PCs on their ability to solve problems without raising too much of a ruckus, but then to point out that they are going to need to be properly equipped to meet their next challenge, and since they managed to avoid trashing the place and avoid earning the ire of the local monsters, the PCs will be offered a substantial discount on their next purchases (and items that they really need will be in stock). If the PCs are actually being given up-front payment to do a job, have some of the payment actually be in the form of discounted equipment/magic items/consumables.
You don't even need to "point out" they be properly equipped.
You can just have them find sufficient loot.
You can even run the automatic bonus progression variant.
There simply is no need to lecture players to play the game right unless that's actually needed.
But gear just isn't one of those lessons. Unless you want it to be. But then you have made that decision. Since it makes no sense for you to decide to run the game in a certain way and then not help your players playing the game that way, there simply is no problem.
You could have decided to not run the game in a way where looting monsters was essential, by simply giving the players the loot anyway, or by making the loot built-into the characters.
Just to say you don't *need* to teach the players to play Pathfinder in a certain way. If you chose to, that's one thing, but it is not the only way.
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