I find the thing that helps the first is simply to plan 2-4 turns ahead as a player. The Second Part typically can be counteracted with a little story telling finesse or planned intervention.
Such as my upcoming campaign having a Group that uses a hollow hill whose walls are filled with lead deposits that form a natural divination barrier. Alongside a Military Camp with a War Room that has lead sandwiched inside the walls. And Adaptive Strategy for NPCs/Enemies helps. Like the typical Dragon fight my Second GM used was every turn possible it would use its breath in a way to get the most of us then would follow up with as many full attacks as possible and would go after the nearest foe. And EVERY dragon used that pattern which made it easy to counter.
But if that dragon instead used intelligence to ignore the Fighter and instead take out the Cleric and Wizard buffing him then it because a bit different. Also if they divide up the attacks against the players it becomes harder to predict.
I've explained there are options outside of those you presented - cohorts (your own or your allies), NPC allies, replacement PCs, events in the afterlife, and rapid resolution. You addressed two flippantly. There is a huge difference between playing a cohort and playing an animal. One is capable of interacting in almost every scene and capable of speech. Another is not.
As for sitting out a session - or the rest of the session - that is rarely an ideal option, but it is something that comes up even without death.
Sure, I used Mount as an extreme example. But if you're running a cohort, you're running someone else's minion. Not only i she less powerful than a PC, but it's the other player's minion, so how about if you get him killed? or he sez "You're not running him right, that's not what Bad'chek would do!".
Sitting out the rest of a session is fine, heck even expected. But not much more than that.
Sure, you might have fun running a replacement character. But others may not want to.
@DrDeth: What I was meaning was something like the Deadlands Quest in... Well I can't remember the game...
But basically your character dies his faction resurrects him but in order to be allowed to by the god of death you have to complete the quest otherwise you retain a status effect making you weaker to non-undead.
Not a quest for the survivors but for the entire party. So they can immediately resurrect their party member but in exchange must agree to help a god or such.
And what I was thinking for the Player's Book is a selection of options that make those levels a bit more interesting and info to help Players learn what those levels mean from their perspective. While the GM Side helps with tips for higher level campaigns.
Sure, a quest after they bring him back is fair. Or something that lasts half a session without him or something.
Sure, a quest after they bring him back is fair. Or something that lasts half a session without him or something.@DrDeth: What I was meaning was something like the Deadlands Quest in... Well I can't remember the game...
But basically your character dies his faction resurrects him but in order to be allowed to by the god of death you have to complete the quest otherwise you retain a status effect making you weaker to non-undead.
Not a quest for the survivors but for the entire party. So they can immediately resurrect their party member but in exchange must agree to help a god or such.
And what I was thinking for the Player's Book is a selection of options that make those levels a bit more interesting and info to help Players learn what those levels mean from their perspective. While the GM Side helps with tips for higher level campaigns.
One I am going to run is the Wizard and Rogue will have to regain a Magical Artifact for a Deity's Faith and in order to meet up with his party both groups will have to travel to a specific location both in the Spirit Plane and Material Plane.
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Wow. Understanding it's merely personal opinion, it's both surprising and disappointing to see a Paizo staff member show so very little confidence in one of its most important products. Saying, well we made a game but part of it isn't fun to me is basically an admission of failure.
I think it's worth noting that this isn't exactly true. They tweaked an already existing game, which is substantially different than creating their own new game.
I find the thing that helps the first is simply to plan 2-4 turns ahead as a player. The Second Part typically can be counteracted with a little story telling finesse or planned intervention.
Such as my upcoming campaign having a Group that uses a hollow hill whose walls are filled with lead deposits that form a natural divination barrier. Alongside a Military Camp with a War Room that has lead sandwiched inside the walls. And Adaptive Strategy for NPCs/Enemies helps. Like the typical Dragon fight my Second GM used was every turn possible it would use its breath in a way to get the most of us then would follow up with as many full attacks as possible and would go after the nearest foe. And EVERY dragon used that pattern which made it easy to counter.
But if that dragon instead used intelligence to ignore the Fighter and instead take out the Cleric and Wizard buffing him then it because a bit different. Also if they divide up the attacks against the players it becomes harder to predict.
I base tactics off of monster/NPC's role (ie Guard, Soldier, Thug) and Wis/Int.
My Dragons are pains in the arse.As for the game with some aspects that aren't fun = failed game.
WoW crafting is boring, they failed at making a good game. Sorry Blizzard, your 15$ a month by quite a few million players was because you failed at making a good game.
What you think of fun is different from me.
I like difficulty, I like barely surviving an encounter. I am the rare individual in the group.
I also allow 1/2 the wealth recommended for making characters. IE A 4th level doesn't have 8000, instead its 4000.
I base tactics off of monster/NPC's role (ie Guard, Soldier, Thug) and Wis/Int.
My Dragons are pains in the arse.As for the game with some aspects that aren't fun = failed game.
WoW crafting is boring, they failed at making a good game. Sorry Blizzard, your 15$ a month by quite a few million players was because you failed at making a good game.
What you think of fun is different from me.
I like difficulty, I like barely surviving an encounter. I am the rare individual in the group.I also allow 1/2 the wealth recommended for making characters. IE A 4th level doesn't have 8000, instead its 4000.
I'm apparently also Satan and Cthulhu's baby.
I like a difficult game as well.
Though the Wealth thing I kind of dislike... After all I like having shiny thingies for my characters. Though I tend to play Martials or Half-Casters...
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I've explained there are options outside of those you presented - cohorts (your own or your allies), NPC allies, replacement PCs, events in the afterlife, and rapid resolution. You addressed two flippantly. There is a huge difference between playing a cohort and playing an animal. One is capable of interacting in almost every scene and capable of speech. Another is not.
As for sitting out a session - or the rest of the session - that is rarely an ideal option, but it is something that comes up even without death.
Sure, I used Mount as an extreme example. But if you're running a cohort, you're running someone else's minion. Not only i she less powerful than a PC, but it's the other player's minion, so how about if you get him killed? or he sez "You're not running him right, that's not what Bad'chek would do!".
Sitting out the rest of a session is fine, heck even expected. But not much more than that.
Sure, you might have fun running a replacement character. But others may not want to.
Alright, yeah, I'm done. I've tried to be reasonable. I've tried to be understanding. I've tried to answer questions in good faith. I've attempted to elaborate on every point as much as feasible. I've even acknowledged that that type of system might not be for everyone.
And yet, your responses continue to be flippant, delete half my answer, and dismissive. So, yeah. I don't see any point in continuing.
As always, I'm impressed with DeathQuaker's insight :)
From my own experience, high-level and low-level games are 100% different games, and the only thing that can make a high-level campaign work is having plot that is far more important than mechanics.
The key to having a high-level game work is to make the combat mechanics secondary. If combat is primary, all high-level games turn into a rocket-tag exercise in who has found the bestest fastest I-win combination.
(After all, as DeathQuaker stated so well earlier, the best way to handle high-level games is not as an arms race between the players and GM, but instead by accepting the insane powers high-level characters have and working that into the storyline.)
On the other hand, if plot takes precedence, then who can cast the fastest most winningest spell is no longer the prime consideration, instead the character interaction and the story move to front and center.
That's not to say that combat is irrelevant. Who wouldn't want to take down Cthulhu, smash an elder brain, or invade the capital city of the aboleth, kicking ass and taking names?
The point is that there needs to be more to a high-level game, or else it gets stale very, very fast.
The thing is, I have a suspicion that most people who say they don't like high level games in fact don't like high level combat, which can easily turn into a tedium of number crunching, spell lookups, and other dreary mechanical drudgery.
With high level games, there is no better mousetrap. You just won't have a party walk into a room, try to figure out how to defeat a pit, get the gem, etc. Instead, encounters are things like, "The blue dragon they angered two sessions ago confronts them and demands they recompense it for the loss of its minions' armaments." Do they kill it? Parlay? Intimidate? Flee? Something else I didn't think of (probably)? Ancient temples and planar rifts become environments to play with... the idea you can just halt them with a pool of lava is long gone. The lava is just there. The long catwalk across the gorge into the Abyss is just there. The lurking dragon is just there. In lower level games, the rule of 3 is pretty handy; you can view each room as a series of modular puzzles. But in higher level games, there is nonesuch, as the rule itself presupposes the characters will advance toward a particular goal. In high level games, I don't plan for when the PCs confront the Big Bad; I just try to be ready for when they do.
If I had my way, I'd bribe a certain teacher to do it.
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I'm definitely in agreement with any arguments that suggest high level play tends to lend itself more to roleplay focused play. Combat does take longer and is dangerous. Players have more capabilities and those capabilities are best managed within the context of character based motivations and relationships.
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Which itself is another reason for closing down the magic mart, and replacing it with a series of relationships.
"We have to help the baron, he's our supplier for adamantine ore"
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Which itself is another reason for closing down the magic mart, and replacing it with a series of relationships.
"We have to help the baron, he's our supplier for adamantine ore"
We basically have in my game for purchases of a certain kind and of a certain magnitude. Generally speaking a lot of the handwaved things in many games tend to get folded in. You can still purchase most cheaper magic items, and you can still find even moderately expensive ones on the market, but it is far from a 'walk in and buy whatever you want' situation. Often times you cannot find exactly what you want on a first look. Many items have to be ordered specifically and take time to arrive (time the party typically doesn't have in which to stand around).
Want to buy high level scrolls? Find someone who can craft them (hint: high level spellcasters).
Want an awesome and powerful new magic weapon? Find someone who can make it (in this case we've deferred in some ways to Battlehammer logic - whereupon renown smiths can craft magic weapons or armor).
Want to copy a spell from another wizard's spellbook? Find the wizard. Cultivate a relationship with them. Convince them to that they should share their carefully guarded spell lore with you. In some cases this may be easy, and in others hard. Some may want things from you other than spells or coin. Couple examples from my regular game:
-There's a powerful wizard in my current game trying to manipulate the party wizard into agreeing to deal most of the goods from a shipping company she has a stake in through his distribution group in exchange for access to his spellbooks.
-Another wizard has offered to share a spellbook she has access to in part as a thanks for saving her life, and in part because she wants the PC as an ally in the future.
-A third wizard - a powerful archmage - owes the party wizard a favor or two and would likely be willing to share spell lore - but would probably consider that cashing in some chips with him.
This kind of thing not only builds character relationships in the form of allies, rivals, enemies, and acquaintances, it also makes the world feel alive. It makes magic feel special and hard earned. Every time my wizard gets access to a new spell that she's wanted there is a sense of achievement rather than simply a financial transaction - and this isn't simply something that applies to spellcasters.
One party fighter had the sword he had used from level 1 sundered when he was approximately level ~8. He kept the pieces and made due until later on (at level ~12) he found someone who was able to reforge as something greater than it was. As a result he got a signature weapon that is very personal, and there was a tremendous sense of achievement for fulfilling that goal - much more than there would have been with simply walking down to the local magic mart and buying a new weapon.
Later, that same fighter found he was falling way behind in the AC department - and likely couldn't keep up in the first place. He asked the GM about other options and eventually his PC went on an expedition to hunt a legendary emerald anaconda in the hope that its skin could be crafted into a set of new armor for him. He didn't know exactly what he was going to get until more than a year later (OOC) when he was able to return and pick up his new armor. It was pretty awesome, and had a sense of achievement greater than walking down to the magic mart. It let him set and achieve a goal and let the GM reward that goal as he saw fit.
That doesn't mean PCs can't buy magic items. It doesn't mean they can't sell magic items, but it does mean that buying and selling isn't quite as easy, and that (especially) selling loads of items requires time and people to sell to. The move away from conventional magic mart is one that I think many players raised on the 3.0/3.5 Character Optimization boards struggle with, but that they also find more rewarded in the long term.
Not sure if this opinion has come up yet, but what ever happened to people using their own imaginations?
Gotcha, some times it's hard to come up with things that will challenge the players and get them into the higher level game but that's part of the responsibilities of the DM.
I personally don't run pre-made campaigns or established worlds; save for one single dungeon that is very unforgiving to the players if they don't pay attention. I can't stand them. They limit what my players can do and they limit my personal growth as a DM. I take what I want from the books and I start building.
It's just like with any published campaigns though. The idea might be there, but fleshing it out takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. Thankfully I've mastered "Sandboxing" but in the end there's always something that I turn to the books for; I've run Heroes and that took so much time to do that it was unbelievable.
All the stuff you need to make higher level campaigns is already in the books.
If I was to build a book; it wouldn't be very long, it would be for the DM's exclusively. I would show them how to take an idea and expand upon it. Figure out an end state and then plan accordingly to kind of make the players get there. Show them how to keep the players in the game by learning how to study your players while you play.
Dude, lay off on the condescension.
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We have a limited number of slots for rulebooks each year, so we have to be careful about how we fill them. Given the choice between a book that will appeal to everyone and a book that will appeal to a subset of everyone, we're almost always going to go with the former.
Thankyou for sharing your opinion and giving an insight into the behind the scenes.
If a book wouldn't work because it couldn't reach a broad enough audience then how about a series of chapters in multiple upcoming books? Next time you do an ultimate magic style book, you could have a single chapter on "Magic in High Level games". Then in the next ultimate combat "Combat in High Level games". Etc. Eventually there would be a book worth of material out there without the book needing to only sell to high level enthusiasts.
*casts Raise Thread*
Just in case anyone from the The Powers That Be are keeping an eye on threads like this: I think that the idea of a high-level play book is a fantastic one, and I would most definitely buy one.
Particularly if it deals with subjects like high-level magic use, magic marts/magic item accessibility, ramifications of high-level capabilities in camapaigns (both social/world-related and combat-related), and related areas. Maybe some thought as to how high-level play functions both in APs (which are usually are more railroad-like and fast-paced with regard to level-acquisition) and in "sandbox" campaigns.