Jessex |
To be fair Kevin, almost all those examples are from modules and the PFS team does not control the development of those. I think that if you did a comprehensive review of encounter challenge, especially at low level, you'll find PFS scenarios hit the mark much more often than missing it.
** spoiler omitted **
There is potential for a negative channel cleric in a certain recent season evergreen actually. I ran it with a particularly murderhobo party and wound up killing one.
MadScientistWorking Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro |
I can second that the bar has been raised in season 7. If you show up without your A game, you're going to pay for it through the nose.
07-06 and 07-08 are no joke, and there's at least one encounter in the first couple of scenarios that came out that are more than happy to chew through your party.
Play up at your own peril.
7-06 is kind of painful I would agree. Just out of curiosity what do you think the hard part of 7-08 because that one is fairly well manageable?
I'm with Ryzoken, the bar's high. I've been a hair's breath from running a tpk in both Six Seconds(one dead, 3 down, 1 ran away)
Was this the end boss because why would you fight that person?
Ascalaphus Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden |
Ryzoken wrote:I can second that the bar has been raised in season 7. If you show up without your A game, you're going to pay for it through the nose.
07-06 and 07-08 are no joke, and there's at least one encounter in the first couple of scenarios that came out that are more than happy to chew through your party.
Play up at your own peril.
7-06 is kind of painful I would agree. Just out of curiosity what do you think the hard part of 7-08 because that one is fairly well manageable?
Quote:I'm with Ryzoken, the bar's high. I've been a hair's breath from running a tpk in both Six Seconds(one dead, 3 down, 1 ran away)Was this the end boss because why would you fight that person?
And if you should succeed at that, the alternate encounter with the quicklings can also be deadly.
MadScientistWorking Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro |
MadScientistWorking wrote:** spoiler omitted **Ryzoken wrote:I can second that the bar has been raised in season 7. If you show up without your A game, you're going to pay for it through the nose.
07-06 and 07-08 are no joke, and there's at least one encounter in the first couple of scenarios that came out that are more than happy to chew through your party.
Play up at your own peril.
7-06 is kind of painful I would agree. Just out of curiosity what do you think the hard part of 7-08 because that one is fairly well manageable?
Quote:I'm with Ryzoken, the bar's high. I've been a hair's breath from running a tpk in both Six Seconds(one dead, 3 down, 1 ran away)Was this the end boss because why would you fight that person?
Its horrible if no one has caught on to the concept that having a diplomat/diplomacy arguably is one of the most important ways to avoid a TPK but I have tier appropriate characters that can make that check easily and they aren't even close to optimized correctly.
Jason S |
7-06 is kind of painful I would agree. Just out of curiosity what do you think the hard part of 7-08 because that one is fairly well manageable?
That just tells me that whoever ran it didn't do it right. The first encounter it should be obvious why it's painful (especially if you didn't play part 1, which people are doing).
The last two encounters Karma is partially customizable, the NPC knows they're coming, and if the GM knows how to play that kind of PC... she can basically make the party look like a party of Benny Hill. The difficulty depends almost entirely on the GM.
TwilightKnight |
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Finlanderboy wrote:But 22 is much more then 13...nosig wrote:Well ten is below average on the roll and 22 might not have worked either.Muser wrote:The diplomat in question rolled 1 on their die. A bonus of 12 just did not cut it. It happens.And people wonder why I like to Take 10....
And less than 25 which is (1) a relatively common skill DC, and (2) not reachable if you have less than a +15 modifier on the roll.
Most players, in my experience, expect DCs to follow a standard increment; 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and in most cases they are correct in their expectation. So, if you think the DC is in the neighborhood of 25 and you have a +12, without aid, taking 10 means a failure. Maybe, the GM will let you wait to decide to take 10 or not until after all the aid attempts are complete. Expect table variation, but if you are staring at a +12 and are guessing that the DC is likely in the 25 range, taking ten is not an option.
Remember, taking 10 is 0.5 below average and typically average does not succeed a whole lot in the dangerous world of adventuring. That is, unless you have max'ed said skill, in which case, take 10 might be an auto-success. The point is, taking 10 is not always what it is cracked up to be.
Dave Setty |
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Finlanderboy wrote:But 22 is much more then 13...nosig wrote:Well ten is below average on the roll and 22 might not have worked either.Muser wrote:The diplomat in question rolled 1 on their die. A bonus of 12 just did not cut it. It happens.And people wonder why I like to Take 10....
22 is a complete failure in the lower subtier of the scenario in question.
Dave Setty |
Its horrible if no one has caught on to the concept that having a diplomat/diplomacy arguably is one of the most important ways to avoid a TPK but I have tier appropriate characters that can make that check easily and they aren't even close to optimized correctly.
You're way off base. 4 ranks and a class skill gives you a 45% chance of success in the lower (3-4) subtier - if your charisma is eighteen. If you've got a fifty-fifty of making that check then you're seriously optimized for it.
And this scenario proceeds to reward you for talking past this fight with an even deadlier one.
nosig |
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nosig wrote:22 is a complete failure in the lower subtier of the scenario in question.Finlanderboy wrote:But 22 is much more then 13...nosig wrote:Well ten is below average on the roll and 22 might not have worked either.Muser wrote:The diplomat in question rolled 1 on their die. A bonus of 12 just did not cut it. It happens.And people wonder why I like to Take 10....
Not something I would know before needing to make the check...
And at this point I think I need to exit this thread, as people appear not to be using "spoilers" to cover scenario knowledge.
Quentin Coldwater Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht |
Why do you insist on taking 10? Half the fun of Pathfinder (IMHO) is rolling that d20 and living with the result. There are a lot of skill checks I could easily make if I took 10, but it's more exciting to see where that die lands. I usually reserve taking 10 if it's a particularly trivial skill I would've made anyhow, or for climbing ropes next to a wall and such.
Ferious Thune |
EDIT: Or with a table of only four players...
I've been wondering if social scenarios can get a 4-player adjustment either to the DCs or to the number of successes you need. I think I mentioned it up thread, but in at least one scenario that uses the Influence mechanic, there is no adjustment to either the DC or the number of successes you need for the secondary success condition. That puts a 4-player group at a significant disadvantage. a 4-player group is less likely to have overlap in the social skills, and, while you can assist and concentrate on a couple of npcs each turn, in order to get the level of success you need, you really do need to split up efforts to maximize the number of possible successes.
Ferious Thune |
By split up in this context, I don't mean actually separate the party. I mean choosing to talk to one or two people at a time or 3 or 4 people at a time. It's a situation where number and quality of success both are important (need X number of successes per NPC and Y number of NPCs with X successes, exceeding the DC by Z nets an extra success). So, there's strategy in it for the players. Do they split up to potentially get successes against more NPCs, or do they concentrate on fewer at a time to see if they can get what they need from one NPC in one round. I can drop hints about how they're doing, but I can't really make that decision for them.
The problem comes in when a 4 player group needs the same number, and same level of successes as a 6 player group. In a scenarios with 3 "turns" of this, where each character may talk to one NPC per turn, a 6 player table has 6 more opportunities to gain or improve a success level. Compared to a 4 player table's 12 chances total. When sometimes there are 5 or 6 NPCs that you can choose to talk to each turn, those extra 6 opportunities are huge.
Dropping 1 or 2 creatures from an encounter for a four player adjustment is common. I'm asking if dropping 1 or 2 required successes from such a social encounter might be appropriate, too.
I'll post a spoilered specific example in a little bit. Need to look through the scenario again.
Iammars |
Ferious Thrune: We had exactly the same complaint when Blakros Matrimony came out, which is why every other social mod like that has had scaling notes or hasn't needed them.
Ferious Thune |
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Ninja'd by James, but I'll leave my notes below. I've only run Blakros Matrimony and The Merchant's Wake. It's good to know the adjustments exist in the other scenarios. Merchant's Wake could have used one as well.
Secondary Success Conditions
The PCs successfully complete their secondary success condition if they conclude the adventure having had successful dealings with at least three key merchants, by gaining 4 or more Influence Points from each of them. Any merchant the PCs have at least 6 Influence Points with count twice for this purpose (for example, the PCs could have 4 Influence Points with one merchant and 6 for another to meet the conditions). If a merchant died during the scenario, his or her Influence Points do not contribute to this goal. Succeeding at this task earns each PC 1 additional Prestige Point.
So you need a minimum 10 Influence points using their example, or 12 if you don't have 6 points on at least one NPC.
Influence points can be gained or lost a couple of different ways. Primarily, you gain them by speaking with the NPCs. You have 2 opportunities to do this, and there are 5 NPCs that you can speak to. The DCs vary from 14 on the low end to 20 on the high end. Exceeding the DC by 5 nets an additional influence point. There are alternate skills to Diplomacy or Bluff for each of the NPCs. So the DCs are designed to encourage multiple successes.
There are some additional ways to gain or lose (unlikely) influence over specific NPCs. Up to 1 - 3 extra points, depending on the NPC.
Concentrating on 2 NPCs might not get you the successes you need, but splitting up to 4 also might not. I had a group run through it and come up a couple of influence points short. Having a 5th or 6th player would definitely have made up the difference.
Yes, there are additional opportunities to gain influence, but there are also fewer rounds to Mingle. Also, as happened in the case of the group I ran through it, they failed to mention or praise any of the Merchant's during their speech at the Wake, even after I dropped hints to do so. Metalla had the most influence points, since they decided to rescue her, but still only came in at 5(I think), because they didn't succeed enough with her in the Mingling. I think they only talked to her once. And they failed the rolls to sabotage Temel.
I'd also suggest that there's a natural impulse for the party to try to talk to as many of the NPCs as possible during the Mingling in order to roleplay with them (the point of such a scenario) and find out actual information.
At any rate, it seems as though my concern was addressed in most of the new scenarios.
FLite Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento |
thaX Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Martinsville |
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If there are some that are finding one of the current 7th season scenarios more difficult than they should be, please write a review of them on their page.
If there are some that are finding one of the current 7th season scenarios that are more reasonable and fun, please write a review of them on their page.
If there are some that are finding one of the current 7th season scenarios is somewhat of a disappointment, please write a review of them on their page.
If there are some that is finding one of the current 7th season scenarios to be one of the best ones yet, please write a review of them on their page.....
BigNorseWolf |
BigNorseWolf wrote:As a DM when its advantageous for a party to split up I usually go out of my way to do so, because otherwise the maxim of "never split the party" keeps them moving along together in aAKA the fireball-formation?paranoidjustifiably concerned huddle
On a battlemat its almost impossible NOT to be in a fireball formation. Thats kinda the point of a fireball..
Jayson MF Kip |
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Every time I begin to think that scenarios aren't challenging enough, I get my face/head/soul/kidneys handed to me on a silver platter.
For every breezy trip through a scenario, there's another where we end the combat with 10 HP split across the entire party.
I'm pretty okay with the difficulty where it is. Right in the spot where a bit of bad luck on the PCs part or "good" luck on the GMs part can really make things hairy.
Azothath |
reviews of scenario's should be on the review page of that scenario. I was gonna say that 100+ posts ago, but it seemed obvious, so I just marked this thread up to grousing on the messageboards and the current "active" thread to comment on.
edit
re-reading the thread has been interesting, you can see some insights and the topic changes. I'd agree that scenarios as a whole are better today than seasons 0-1.
It's been awhile since you could choose your tier, so IMO hard mode is a thing of the past. You could always play with 5 players rather than 6 but I really think that's the extent of the APL finegalling and do you really want to tell someone - hey you have to sit it out as we want it tough! lol.
I think if you really want "hard mode" then play PFS scenarios in a home game setting and free your GM. Let him pump up the CR to APL+3 or 4 by adding a mook or two with a chainsaw (who doesn't love chainsaws?).
nosig |
reviews of scenario's should be on the review page of that scenario. I was gonna say that 100+ posts ago, but it seemed obvious, so I just marked this thread up to grousing on the messageboards and the current "active" thread to comment on.
edit
re-reading the thread has been interesting, you can see some insights and the topic changes. I'd agree that scenarios as a whole are better today than seasons 0-1.It's been awhile since you could choose your tier, so IMO hard mode is a thing of the past. You could always play with 5 players rather than 6 but I really think that's the extent of the APL finegalling and do you really want to tell someone - hey you have to sit it out as we want it tough! lol.
I think if you really want "hard mode" then play PFS scenarios in a home game setting and free your GM. Let him pump up the CR to APL+3 or 4 by adding a mook or two with a chainsaw (who doesn't love chainsaws?).
If I wanted to play hard mode, I can just run an underpowered lower level PC. Not hard to do, I have a lot of PCs... So I can always pick one at the bottom of the tier/sub tier.
Azothath |
Stephen Ross wrote:If I wanted to play hard mode, I can just run an underpowered lower level PC. Not hard to do, I have a lot of PCs... So I can always pick one at the bottom of the tier/sub tier....
I think if you really want "hard mode" then play PFS scenarios in a home game setting and free your GM. Let him pump up the CR to APL+3 or 4 by adding a mook or two with a chainsaw (who doesn't love chainsaws?).
time to burn some GM stars on Bonekeep... dibs on the Estra tha Spiritualist...
Finlanderboy |
Ragoz wrote:Almost all scenarios as a whole are too easy by designI think a large portion of the community would disagree with you
This all depends your GMs, and people you play with.
Some GMs purposely snowball scenarios, and some people bring a character that has the easy button for every encounter.
MadScientistWorking Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro |
No seriously optimizing it would have me succeeding on the check on a 5 which was her original incarnation. Also, having been reminded about the encounter I could have handled that pretty handily too. I think part of the problem is I tend to play with spellcaster heavy groups which tend to stomp all over encounter difficulty.MadScientistWorking wrote:
Its horrible if no one has caught on to the concept that having a diplomat/diplomacy arguably is one of the most important ways to avoid a TPK but I have tier appropriate characters that can make that check easily and they aren't even close to optimized correctly.You're way off base. 4 ranks and a class skill gives you a 45% chance of success in the lower (3-4) subtier - if your charisma is eighteen. If you've got a fifty-fifty of making that check then you're seriously optimized for it.
And this scenario proceeds to reward you for talking past this fight with an even deadlier one.
MadScientistWorking wrote:7-06 is kind of painful I would agree. Just out of curiosity what do you think the hard part of 7-08 because that one is fairly well manageable?That just tells me that whoever ran it didn't do it right. The first encounter it should be obvious why it's painful (especially if you didn't play part 1, which people are doing).
The last two encounters Karma is partially customizable, the NPC knows they're coming, and if the GM knows how to play that kind of PC... she can basically make the party look like a party of Benny Hill. The difficulty depends almost entirely on the GM.
Its not because we effectively ended the encounter in 1 round. Sure we still fought the thing but all difficultly was lost. Also the end encounter and the way its set up kind of doesn't make any sense given that the class itself isn't one you want to run as a solo.
Matthew Morris RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8 |
time to burn some GM stars on Bonekeep... dibs on the Estra tha Spiritualist...
I've only had the pleasure of running Bonekeep I once, but it is amusing how people take Bonekeep.
Group A. Bring it on! (I actually have a couple locals working on a GM star just for a rematch)
Group B. Let me work a new character up to level, so I won't feel bad when it dies. :-(
nosig |
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Stephen Ross wrote:
time to burn some GM stars on Bonekeep... dibs on the Estra tha Spiritualist...
I've only had the pleasure of running Bonekeep I once, but it is amusing how people take Bonekeep.
Group A. Bring it on! (I actually have a couple locals working on a GM star just for a rematch)
Group B. Let me work a new character up to level, so I won't feel bad when it dies. :-(
or option three:
"Wait, Bonekeep? I didn't sign up for... wait, I think my wife needs me at home. Sorry, gotta go!"Nimrandir Venture-Captain, North Carolina—Asheville |
Matthew Morris wrote:Stephen Ross wrote:
time to burn some GM stars on Bonekeep... dibs on the Estra tha Spiritualist...
I've only had the pleasure of running Bonekeep I once, but it is amusing how people take Bonekeep.
Group A. Bring it on! (I actually have a couple locals working on a GM star just for a rematch)
Group B. Let me work a new character up to level, so I won't feel bad when it dies. :-(
or option three:
"Wait, Bonekeep? I didn't sign up for... wait, I think my wife needs me at home. Sorry, gotta go!"
Would putting your face in your hands and sobbing count as a variant of option three, or is it a separate reaction?
nosig |
nosig wrote:Would putting your face in your hands and sobbing count as a variant of option three, or is it a separate reaction?Matthew Morris wrote:Stephen Ross wrote:
time to burn some GM stars on Bonekeep... dibs on the Estra tha Spiritualist...
I've only had the pleasure of running Bonekeep I once, but it is amusing how people take Bonekeep.
Group A. Bring it on! (I actually have a couple locals working on a GM star just for a rematch)
Group B. Let me work a new character up to level, so I won't feel bad when it dies. :-(
or option three:
"Wait, Bonekeep? I didn't sign up for... wait, I think my wife needs me at home. Sorry, gotta go!"
Depends... Did you get away? Then it counts.
Matthew Morris RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8 |
I've been debating on burning a star (if I ever see a replay boon) to try Bonekeep with a more appropriate character, like one of my utility belt equipped skill monkeys...
I like challenges, but HATE puzzles without some mechanic to overcome/bypass. If I'm playing an INT 16 character, that I hate math puzzles shouldn't slow my PC down. I mean I don't need to lift 350 lbs to play an 18 strength fighter.
trollbill Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne |
Just played several scenarios in season 7 this weekend and they were all deadly. Noobs will certainly die in them unless their GM softballs like mad (or doesn't understand the NPCs powers at all).
Season 7 so far is complex and I'm finding there is intense table variation because GMs are not running scenarios as intended.
I agree Season 7 scenarios are more complex. This may be what people have been asking for but I have a 2-fold problem with complexity in an organized play environment.
First, if you have a dedicated GM, increased complexity makes more work for the GM. When I was involved in LFR, near its end adventures got ridiculously complex. It was extremely painful and unfun to prep and run many of these adventures and was one of the reasons I left. So complex modules can discourage good GMs or worse, encourage them to not be good GMs.
Second, there is a particular Season 5 adventure with a colossal creature in the first encounter. I both played and ran this encounter and found it challenging but not excessively deadly. But I kept hearing about a large number of TPKs from this, so I started asking around as to what caused them. In every single case I was able to find out about, the TPK was caused by the GM not following the creature's listed tactics (the author obviously wrote the tactics to nerf the encounter). Casual GMs have a tendency to skim over details like this and this is why this encounter has such a high TPK rate. Now imagine what happens with casual GMs and complex adventures. The more complex you make an adventure, the more table variation you are going to get from GMs and the more deadly they become when the GM misses something.
andreww |
Second, there is a particular Season 5 adventure with a colossal creature in the first encounter. I both played and ran this encounter and found it challenging but not excessively deadly. But I kept hearing about a large number of TPKs from this, so I started asking around as to what caused them. In every single case I was able to find out about, the TPK was caused by the GM not following the creature's listed tactics (the author obviously wrote the tactics to nerf the encounter). Casual GMs have a tendency to skim over details like this and this is why this encounter has such a high TPK rate. Now imagine what happens with casual GMs and complex adventures. The more complex you make an adventure, the more table variation you are going to get from GMs and the more deadly they become when the GM misses something.
The greater problem with most of the reports of serious problems with this scenario was people giving it a surprise round and then trampling during it which doesn't work.
Jason S |
Casual GMs have a tendency to skim over details like this and this is why this encounter has such a high TPK rate. Now imagine what happens with casual GMs and complex adventures. The more complex you make an adventure, the more table variation you are going to get from GMs and the more deadly they become when the GM misses something.
The problem isn't casual GMs. I find that 3+ star GMs run so many scenarios, they are often LESS prepared than more casual GMs because the casual GMs actually take (or have?) the time to prepare properly.
One thing I've learned is that you can't count on GMs to take a killer encounter and then nerf it by giving it the listed tactics or other advantages the PCs should get. These advantages aren't even explained a lot of the time.
And then the experienced GMs who softball and take AE spells (Fear, Confusion) and apply them to only 1 target. Maybe a better play experience but the true difficulty of the scenario won't be indicated in reviews.
Or the experienced GMs (3+ star) who cheat to make encounters more challenging (robbing you of gold/PA) or do coupe de grace when it's inappropriate.
"Run as written" is a foreign concept for those of us who play in a variety of conventions and also GM. It's rare that anything is run as written in my experience.