Emerald Spire Drowned Level Question

[John Woodford]

Staying as spoiler-free as possible, the 5th level of Emerald Spire allows a party, with the right choices, to bypass the most serious combats on their way to the exit to the next level.

More Details:

If the summoner in E1 loses his eidolon, his tactics say he flees to join his sisters. This happened in the game...hold that thought until later. The mudlord in E6 can be avoided, and in this case the party did so after figuring out what was in there by scouting from E4. If the summoner in E8 is overpowered, she flees to join her siblings. This also happened in the game. By dint of some excellent Swim checks and Reflex saves, the party avoided being pulled into E10 and fighting the giant moray eel.

So as the party was wrapping up the level, E12 contained all three summoners and their eidolons, plus the variant emerald automaton. But there's a side passage before E12 that leads to the access to the next level down, which they took--neatly avoiding what could have been a very messy fight.

I don't see any guidance on the chronicle sheet or in the scenario itself for reducing the amount of treasure based on the encounters missed. I assume that the items that would be found in those encounters get crossed off the chronicle sheet, but I don't know how much (if any) to reduce the gold awarded. Is that information available, and if so where?

[Egil Firehair]

It's been a long time since I explored the Emerald Spire.

My advice, is to look at the chronicle sheet and check the items that were missed. They should all have a gold value associated with them. Add up the value of the items missed & deduct it from the total loot... as long as that value doesn't exceed 1/2 the total loot. because even if they didn't catch the two defeated summoners, they still entered their areas and overcame the obstacles therein. They know about the moray eel, and presumable will report that danger to the Society.

So... they have mostly met the Explore & Report requirements of the Society.

[Tomppa]

That advice isn't strictly speaking a clear rule,though.

The Guide says that "this value represents the total gold piece value a character receives for defeating all enemies and finding all treasure" but the emerald spire isn't written for pathfinder society, there could be, for example, an item on a floor that's value is more than the total wealth gained for that whole adventure. If the players miss that item, would you give them 0 gold despite them killing everything else and finding everything else? Obviously not.
To modify the gold value, you'd need to know what encounters are supposed to give how much gold. That information (for PFS) isn't written anywhere for the emerald spire, so just reward them the full amount.

Just cross over the items they missed (as per guide, p. 16, step 7).

Especially if you only spring this onto the players *after* the game, they'll probably be disappointed - If missing loot meant losing gold, they (probably) would have just crawled through every nook and cranny and room, instead of playing it safe and smart.

ALSO, for this adventure, something like 90%+ of the loot is tied to the summoners anyway. If this was a PFS scenario, there would probably be rewards for copying notes and figuring out stuff.

[Egil Firehair]

I cannot agree. Per the description given, all three Summoners are still alive and are ready to bushwhack anybody that across them. They are exploring, yes, but they are leaving a potent trio of foes behind to cause trouble later.

[Tomppa]

Ah, I misread, I thought they beat up the summoners.

Yeah, Okay, the missed the boss fight and 90+% of the loot.
However, there's no instructions on how much gold you should deduct per missed encounter, and there's an argument to be made that "sneaking around the summoners" is a "clever solution" to avoiding the combat, but it's down to semantics.

In any case, I don't think a GM should go around changing scenario rewards without actual clear printed instructions on how to do so.