Abomination Vaults run as sanctioned Pathfinder Society games & XP

[PixelCarp]

Hey! I'm gearing up to run Abomination Vaults as Organized Play and I'm reading that players gain 12 XP per section they complete. There are 3 sections in the whole AP (Chapters 1-4/5-7/8-10). Players gain 1 level after collecting 12 XP, so are the players only going to be level 2 heading into Chapter 5 of the Adventure Path? Or level 3 heading into Chapter 8!? If so, are players suppose to halt play in the adventure path between these sections to play other PFS scenarios and return when they are ready to take on the next leg of the AP?

[NielsenE]

When playing sanctioned adventures/adventure paths like AV, the character playing the adventure is NOT the character receiving credit. The character playing the adventure gains XP at the usual rate (commonly using the built in milestones to the AP), and then after every chunk you award a chronicle that gets applied to a normal society character (who didn't play the adventure).

[PixelCarp]

Oh DAMN! Nutty. So honestly, to keep things simple, I should just be running Scenarios, Quests and Bounties. The players I have only have the one character at the moment, so I'll hold off on the APs for Organized Play. Thanks for the info.

[NielsenE]

If your players have existing PFS2 characters and want to play those characters, yes, sticking to Scenarios, Quests, and Bounties would make the most sense.

Adventure Mode for sanctioned content (see: Additional Adventures -- Modes of Play) is designed for letting a group play through an AP with a separate set of characters, that can break normal PFS2 rules, while rewarding GM/player chronicles to be applied to normal PFS2 characters. Often allowing access to more limited archetypes/etc to flow into PFS in small quantities.

Sometimes people will make a "clone" of their PFS character to play in the AP, this clone will progress through the levels more quickly than the character receiving the chronicle (10 levels in the AP, versus 3 levels of chronicles). But there is no requirement to have the AP character be tied to the chronicle character. just that some people want to, or use the AP to test drive the character's build at higher levels.

[Pirate Rob]

I like to think of it like an Ice Cream Parlor with a stamp card.

PFS games are ice cream. Every 12 stamps you get a free cone (Character level)

AP and other adventure content is like the sandwiches and candy and stuff they also sell. Sure it's not Ice Cream, but they'll still give you your stamps.