Loosely paraphrasing and translating from a conversation about the problems with high level play and writing scenarios for high tiers.

The way I see it the main problem with writing scenarios for a group of high level characters is the access to mind-bogglingly powerful travel and divination magic. These spells in particular are adept at causing problems for a budding scenario writer: Divination, Commune, Plane Shift (if the character has planar forks), Find The Path, Planar Binding, Contact Other Plane, Teleport and Scry. There just isn't an easy way around this problem. Here are a few options:

1) Ignore the problem altogether. The main problem with this approach is that a party with access to said types of magic will just waltz through the scenario divining everything in advance and don't even think about writing something that hinges on the characters actually taking the time to travel to a location by normal means.

2) Have all the main McGuffins and NPC:s be magically protected against said measures. This approach is sure to piss off said diviners since it practically makes their whole character concept null and void.

3) Write the scenarios in such a way that information gathering and travel are non-existent to begin with. This puts a serious damper on most plot structures and again we have the problem of the players of diviners getting shafted. Also, I'd imagine that scenarios like this could get quite tedious after a while.

4) Find a solution that is better than any of the above. So far I'm drawing a blank.

As always, a constructive and insightful discussion on this topic would be most appreciated.

Scenarios are limited to 12th level and below, so the highest level divination spells won't really be accessible. Additionally, with wealth being a huge deal to most org play characters, I can't see them paying the material cost of some "broken" spells for a one-off scenario. If it were an ongoing campaign, maybe, but not for a 4 hour game.

yoda8myhead, the spells Navdi listed are all accessible by 11th level casters. When your character starts playing highest tier scenarios, you don't have to prepare for the next tier by hoarding gold for more powerful magical items anymore.

Hence, one shot items and spells with costly material components will be used more often.

I don't think most of those are really big problems. For the teleport/plane shift types, you need to know where you're going. Generally, the PFS adventures you start out where you need to go, or at least as far as you know where. For scenarios where you do have a end point in mind, those are lower tier adventures where these spells aren't available.

As for divinations, I don't see how these break anything. If you have a player who spends spells and resources on this kind of magic, they should get an advantage. The big issue I think these spells raise is putting the GM on the spot to come up with a good response. The divination spell itself is the big problem here. It would be great if PFS adventures could spare the word count to provide a divination cryptic riddle.

Let's see what these divinations and teleportations would do if the first PFS scenarios could be played at a high tier. Spoilers will be found under the spoiler tags (gasp!)

#1 Silent tide

#2 Hydra's fang

#3 Murder on the Silken caravan

#4 Frozen Fingers of Midnight

#5 Mists of Mwangi

#6 Black Waters

#7 Among the Living

#8 Slave pits of Absalom

#9 Eye of the crocodile king

#10 Blood at Dralkard Manor

The point of this is that something should be done differently in higher tier scenarios, so they won't be owned by capable casters.

Well, scenarios 1-6 and 8-9 are only are meant through level 5, so scrying and teleporting shouldn't be an issue.

Scenarios 7 and 10 support up to 7th level, and you could get divination in these, but telportation should still be out of reach.

Until higher level scenarios are out, this really isn't an issue.

I suspect that one way we'll handle it is by cinching down the tier band once we get up there, so that the highest level adventrues will not be appropriate for as wide a range of levels. But this is an excellent point, and a great reason why I'm so against using "Scaling the Adventure" sidebars in print; balancing an adventure isn't just about adjusting hit points and CRs. Murder Mysteries at 2nd level have to be built differently at 5th level (speak with dead) and then even MORE differently at 9th (raise dead and commune). Devious dungeons filled with pits and hard climbs work differently as early as 3rd level when levitate shows up, and underwater encounters are nerfed (or enabled, depending on how you look at things) at 5th level with water breathing. Long overland journeys become one-sentance summaries once PCs can teleport or shadow walk or wind walk.

All of these involve major readjustments to the way adventures are written, and they can't really be addressed by the tier system as well. But that's part of why we gave ourselves a year with Season 0, so that we'd have a lot more time to think about how everything'll work out. Even if it ends up being the effective but blunt method of "Commune is banned in PFS," I suppose. I hope we won't take that route, but instead will provide advice for how to incorperate these spells into the adventures. And that's something that, ultimately, will fall on authors and should be reflected in your proposals as needed, to bring this whole post back around to relavancy.

Well, scenarios 1-6 and 8-9 are only are meant through level 5, so scrying and teleporting shouldn't be an issue.

Scenarios 7 and 10 support up to 7th level, and you could get divination in these, but telportation should still be out of reach.

Until higher level scenarios are out, this really isn't an issue.

The example wasn't about "What you can do in the scenario", but "what you could do in the scenario". The difference is astronomical.