Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2e: Actual Play Experience

[kenada]

What that table does is this:

Let's ask how many Low encounters do you need to level up? Answer: 13 1/3

So let's divide up the level's worth of gold by 13 1/3, so that if you encounter nothing but Low encounters, you total the "correct" amount of gold just as you level up. Same for Moderate (10 encounters), Severe (6 2/3) and Extreme (5). That's the table!

It still assumes party level, though. I mean, it makes me remember when we discussed:

The table isn't for that. If you give out 440 gold because that's the amount for a Severe encounter and because the Drakes are level 7, that... I simply wonder "doesn't the table become totally meaningless then?" (What is the accuracy or correctness, I mean, in handing out a number like 440 gold at level 5? Why not just look at cool level 7 treasure to place in the drake nest? I mean at that point we've tossed out the guidelines so it's time to stop worrying )

So not sure how groundbreaking or useful that "Treasure by Encounter" table is. It doesn't take items into account, which means a truckload of calculations. (If that Drake encounter is a Severe encounter for your fifth level gang, it should yield 200 gold, so if those drakes had a +1 armor, that leaves 200-160=40 gold in cash. Either you're meticulous about this, meaning you do this calculations diligently each time... or you aren't and you don't and... why not just skip the table and wing it?)

Buying treasure out of the gold is how my parcel system works, so having to do that here is not a big deal to me. However, you make a good point about its still being tied to PC level, and that means it doesn’t do what I want it to do.

And of course it doesn't account for the fact that you will often want an easy encounter to yield more loot, and you will want hard encounters that are a "waste" lootwise. Meaning you will still have to keep tally of how much total gold you have awarded as soon as you deviate from "every low encounter gives exactly one thirteenth and a third of the total level's worth". Which brings you right back to where you started: knowing that a party of any level is expected to gain ten items and twice the value of an at-level item in cash.

Not to mention the elephant in the room: sometimes nearly always you will feature more or less Low encounters than 13 1/3 before you want to level up the heroes!

I mean let's face it: lots of tables and lots calculations is a quality that gives off a veneer of scientificity and objectivity. Paizo loves that naughty word (just like WotC I might add).

But the truth when it comes to loot and especially xp is that good GMing is an art, not a science. To be frank, I consider this just a lot of work for the GM for very little benefit. I personally don't have time for that.

I like playing with subsystems and rules, so I’ll probably continue playing with things until I get something I like. The parcel system is not great. It’s basically winging it in a way.

Since I want to do this old-school thing where loot is based on an external factor (i.e., not party level), I’m going to need to take a different approach. I won’t be able to use the guidelines directly. They’ll just be a benchmark, like the creature creation tables. What I think I’ll need to do is devise a system that generates loot over the course of a standard campaign such that the overall distribution follows the guidelines.

Yeah, it’s work, but like I said, I like playing with these kinds of things.

So what would I then find useful?

Going back to the random generator, my point was that I see little need to introduce a new "parcel" term. Just have the generator randomize the items (6 consumables, 4 permanent) and tell me the gold amount, and I can do everything else myself.

Useful customization would of course include

• being able to select your number of players (3, 4, 5 or 6). Paizo's total focus on 4 players is a bitch to recalculate when you run your AP for 5 players (unless, of course, you just don't care. Then it becomes easy )
• a checkbox for "heap of lesser items" so that one out of the ten items is randomly replaced by a "goodie bag" of several lower-level items of the same approximate value
• a checkbox for "whackiness" that gives the generator a chance to ignore all rules. As long as the randomized treasure isn't a fundamental rune or worth millions, it could be fun to have it render a cool item that gets the GMs imagination going (the item might still be too valuable to hand out, but it might make you come up with something similar of lower power)

This is good stuff.

 

[CapnZapp]

The nice thing about the 3-action system is the versatility of each action. Sure, your 3rd attack isn't likely to hit anything that poses a real danger to your characters (unless you're pumping the system to reduce your MAP). But there are so many different things you can do with that 3rd action. Or even the 1st and 2nd ones, for that matter. Don't articially limit player choices to only move. Maybe suggest they do something other than attack with that 3rd action. Give them some examples.

If the players doesn't learn to not waste their third action on -10 attacks they will likely suffer for it

(Meaning, that spending that action on raising your shield, or moving out of melee range, or something else, is noticeably more effective, and you seldom can afford ineffectiveness in PF2)

 

[CapnZapp]

Since I want to do this old-school thing where loot is based on an external factor (i.e., not party level), I’m going to need to take a different approach. I won’t be able to use the guidelines directly.

In that case, I suggest using the guidelines not at all. And since you don't have a suggested target to aim for, I wouldn't bother with all the calculations at all.

I would just do it the way it was done back in that old school you're talking about. Dangerous monsters keep valuable loot. Balance be damned!

(That every dangerous creature needs underlings to provide deterrence against taking it on "too early" is something you already know)

In a way it's like using that critical hits deck @Philip Benz is talking about. Or creating characters using random roll.

That is, not worrying about balance, which is decidedly unlike the RAW approach. Paizo is super obsessed with balance in this game!

I mean, PF2 can probably be enjoyable even without this balance. I'm just saying that the main benefit of the RAW guidelines is upholding balance. In a campaign without that aim, the reasons to use them just fall apart.

If you've run AD&D or 5E, you're likely not used to this. Those tables and guidelines were made for other reasons than just balance. So the new unfamiliar notion I'm propagating here is: "drop the guidelines if balance isn't your primary, nay only, concern!"

 

[kenada]

If you've run AD&D or 5E, you're likely not used to this. Those tables and guidelines were made for other reasons than just balance. So the new unfamiliar notion I'm propagating here is: "drop the guidelines if balance isn't your primary, nay only, concern!"

To be fair, I’d also include PF1 in that list. It was pretty sloppy about balance too.

I get that what I want sounds like a contradiction. I want something that follows the guidelines when I’m running a campaign that doesn’t strictly follow those guidelines. There’s a few reasons for that.

First, like I said, I like playing with these things. When I GM, amateur design is one of the fun parts, so I see devising a system that generates loot according to the guidelines (assuming a standard campaign but not using party level as a basis) as an interesting exercise. I’d been working on a gacha-based system for 4e before we switched to PF2, and it would be nice to get back to that.

The other is I’m just bad at giving out enough treasure if I don’t have these tables. Even if my campaign is doing non-standard things, having them means I can easily have some treasure ready to go. Of course, that assumes my PCs make an effort to find the treasure. They’ve managed to miss a bunch so far.

 

[CapnZapp]

I get that what I want sounds like a contradiction. I want something that follows the guidelines when I’m running a campaign that doesn’t strictly follow those guidelines. There’s a few reasons for that.

First, like I said, I like playing with these things. When I GM, amateur design is one of the fun parts, so I see devising a system that generates loot according to the guidelines (assuming a standard campaign but not using party level as a basis) as an interesting exercise. I’d been working on a gacha-based system for 4e before we switched to PF2, and it would be nice to get back to that.

The other is I’m just bad at giving out enough treasure if I don’t have these tables. Even if my campaign is doing non-standard things, having them means I can easily have some treasure ready to go. Of course, that assumes my PCs make an effort to find the treasure. They’ve managed to miss a bunch so far.

You don't need treasure in PF2. You do need fundamental runes, so let me summarize the GMG for you:

Gain attack upgrades at levels 6, 12 and 18: +1 and two weapon dice at 6th level; +2 and three weapon dice at 12th level and +3 and four weapon dice at 18th. Heck, gain defensive upgrades at those levels too, just to keep things simple (+1 to AC and all three saves at 6th, +2 at 12th, +3 at 18th).

And while that might sound like a small list, really, only the extra weapon dice are truly needed.

There. All other treasure are distractions, things you don't need to succeed. (Another way of saying this is of course that Paizo doesn't let you have toys that actually make a difference)

Now then, how does my suggestion "don't worry about it, just hand out cool stuff" sound?

 

[RangerWickett]

I know you're an experienced designer, but honestly, this comes off as a pretty newbish look at the system.

To clarify, I'm not house-ruling PF2. I'm making a new game that takes some design elements from PF2 I liked (a multi-action turn, tasks that take multiple actions, 4 degrees of success, keywords on abilities to better codify them), and some ideas from Starfinder (Resolve Points to fuel cool powers and healing) and the Legend of the Five Rings FFG card game (having a limited suite of defensive reactions add some more sense of play-counterplay to combat).

Then I'm retooling the way combat plays to feel a bit more like Horizon: Zero Dawn or the PS4 God of War, which reward a mix of different offensive actions, plus an attention to defense. They don't want you to just use the same attack repeatedly. So in this system, the hope is that it still plays fast, but that each round your calculus on what attack is optimal changes.

I could polish it up and share a copy if you're interested.

 

[CapnZapp]

To clarify, I'm not house-ruling PF2.

I figured as much!

Thanks for replying. I'll leave any further questions to zztong.

 

[kenada]

You don't need treasure in PF2. You do need fundamental runes, so let me summarize the GMG for you:

Gain attack upgrades at levels 6, 12 and 18: +1 and two weapon dice at 6th level; +2 and three weapon dice at 12th level and +3 and four weapon dice at 18th. Heck, gain defensive upgrades at those levels too, just to keep things simple (+1 to AC and all three saves at 6th, +2 at 12th, +3 at 18th).

And while that might sound like a small list, really, only the extra weapon dice are truly needed.

There. All other treasure are distractions, things you don't need to succeed. (Another way of saying this is of course that Paizo doesn't let you have toys that actually make a difference)

Now then, how does my suggestion "don't worry about it, just hand out cool stuff" sound?

It appreciate the suggestion, but that’s not a direction I’m looking to go. I’m just not a fan of automatic bonus progression. It’s also not the problem I’m trying to solve.

I care about balance, but it’s to the extent that it helps me reason about the game. I want to roll for treasure. If I devise a system for that, then I want to know it conforms to the guidelines for a standard game even if that’s not what I’m running.

Would I be better off running something like OSE? Maybe, but I got a chilly response when I mentioned it to the group. My players like PF2, and I don’t mind running it, but I’m also going to tinker with it.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think we're discussing many things simultaneously which makes it hard to understand what you aim for.



What you CAN do is say "okay so this sandbox is meant to take heroes from level 1 to level 10" (say). Then the CBR will tell you exactly what treasure it expects the characters to gain during that time. Then you can distribute that treasure appropriately according to monster power.

But note nothing about the official guidelines in step 1 relate to step 2. It's not possible to pin down any specific rule, like you seem to want: "a dragon has a quadruple level 12 hoard" since the amount of player levels and monsters in each sandbox is different.

I mean you COULD, but then you would end up with a different amount of treasure than what the official guidelines suggest.

...and we're back where we started.

In conclusion, you can have official-y sounding treasure rules and you can have monster-based treasure, but you can't have both.

There's no need to abandon PF2 merely for this reason, though.

 

[kenada]

I think we're discussing many things simultaneously which makes it hard to understand what you aim for.

Yeah. I find the problem of trying to devise a treasure generation by monster level system interesting, and that’s reflecting in my responses. Let me split up my response between that and the problem in my campaign, and I’ll try to flag those accordingly.

What you CAN do is say "okay so this sandbox is meant to take heroes from level 1 to level 10" (say). Then the CBR will tell you exactly what treasure it expects the characters to gain during that time. Then you can distribute that treasure appropriately according to monster power.

But note nothing about the official guidelines in step 1 relate to step 2. It's not possible to pin down any specific rule, like you seem to want: "a dragon has a quadruple level 12 hoard" since the amount of player levels and monsters in each sandbox is different.

(This is about my campaign and treasure distribution.) The CRB recommends giving out more than the expected amount in a sandbox. How much depends on the nature of the sandbox. Mine is pretty open-ended, so that probably translates into a lot more.

However, I think I get what you’re proposing. Essentially, have a campaign-wide treasure pool. The party is going to earn X over the course of the campaign, and I can draw from that when placing treasure based on whatever idiosyncratic reason I have. That’s not a bad idea. The only complication is my game has a rotating roster of PCs.

The most prudent approach, and as much as I hate to admit it, may be a combination of winging it and checking the PCs’ sheets between sessions for gaps and being mindful of what they’re missing when I determine treasure.

I mean you COULD, but then you would end up with a different amount of treasure than what the official guidelines suggest.

...and we're back where we started.

In conclusion, you can have official-y sounding treasure rules and you can have monster-based treasure, but you can't have both.

(This is about treasure generating methods for PF2.) I’m not sure I quite agree that it’s not possible. That’s more or less how the tables in 5e work. Per chapter 2 of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, there’s an expected distribution of treasure if you use those tables. PF2 just gives us the expected distribution and not how to generate it (from tables), but it should be possible to reverse engineer one that does generate treasure according to the guidelines.

My first avenue of attack is likely to be looking at the deltas between monster level and party level. Assuming treasure is awarded by party level, you should be able to figure out a weighted average treasure by party level from the deltas. For example, if a level 3 creature is used as a party level − 1 creature 75% of the time and a party level creature 25% of the time in moderate encounters, then it should yield 35 gp in a moderate encounter. Of course, that has undergone no analysis, and it may be totally crap.

There's no need to abandon PF2 merely for this reason, though.

When I mention OSE, it’s because that game has more structures for the kind of game I’m running. PF2 is pretty explicit that it’s about story first, but my game is about exploration first. There’s no story per se, though there are war stories, and there is an emergent narrative.

That’s not to say it’s a bad fit. The first half was spent in 5e before we converted, and PF2 has worked much better. Exploration mode adapts pretty well to what I’m doing. We’ve spent about fourteen sessions in six (out of 121) hexes, and really most of our time has been in three or so of those.

I can’t see my group switching again. I think my players have grown rather fond of PF2.