You Reach A Three-Way Branch


General Discussion


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Whichever path you choose to take, with every step the road grows rougher yet you become more powerful.

Should you take the right path, the difficulty of travel will increase more gradually than your own might. With every step taken you feel more capable, yet in turn you move further from any genuine challenge.

Should you take the left path, the adversity you must traverse grows more rapidly than your own strength. Each stride is a greater achievement to take, but each casts you as relatively weaker than the last.

Should you take the centre path, your own growth and that of what you confront are perfectly matched. You shall never feel weaker or deprived of challenge, nor feel stronger or challenged to any new extent.

The paths do not have fences. One may switch from one path to another or walk between them, but this leaves travellers to their own mastery, or that of a guide, to navigate such unmarked terrain.

Where do you want to go?

Or: Should a level 20 party facing a "level 20 challenge" find it easier / harder / as hard as their level 1 selves did facing a "level 1 challenge"?

Tastes vary.


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For a videogame, I like the idea that enemies start out a bit weaker than you, then slowly ramp up to surpass you to the point that you have to rely on strategy/skill to succeed.

In my TTRPGs, I like for the GM to be able to set the difficulty as they see fit.

Maybe they want a typical videogame difficulty progression? Maybe they want Dark Souls? Maybe they want you to start out struggling, and wind up being Superman at the end?

All should be viable and I wouldn't want Paizo to explicitly design enemies around any of these ideas.

Personally, I want a CR X to be an approximately fair challenge for a party of level Xs. As a GM, I can start my party at a higher level if I want an easy start, or throw higher CR enemies against my group if I want them to struggle.

If I want a typical videogame progression, I can start the party at level 2 or 3 and have them face CR 1 foes, then have them fight CR 10 enemies at level 10, and end up at level 18 to 20 fighting CR 20+ enemies.

If I want Dark Souls, I can just throw CR (APL+1 or 2) enemies at them the whole game.

If I want a strong sense of growth, I can start with Level 1 PCs and CR 2-3 enemies and end with Level 20s fighting CR 16 to 18s.


I want the ability to bounce between all three at any given moment.


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As presented, I would take the left path, based on the premise that as your characters grow in power, so does the player in terms of skill.

So the Tarrasque may be proportionally mathematically more challenging than the gnoll, because when the low level character meets the gnoll he's unexperienced and tries to get by whacking away at it. By the time the Tarrasque is on the table, the player knows how to manipulate the game to turn impossible odds into a chance of victory.


To offer an allegory:

A young Batman may struggle taking down a mob hit squad.

An experienced Batman defeated Superman.

In his growth, Batman was always closer to the mob grunts than Superman in personal power. How he tackled the fight is what changed the outcome.


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

You made it back from your last adventure, weary but victorious. After a few days three messengers arrive bearing urgent requests. One offers a high risk, high reward quest. One offers a low risk, low reward quest. The third offers a quest that perfectly matches your capabilities.

Which do you choose?

In other words, a party can always say "Eff that" to a challenge that exceeds their stomach for risk. The GM says "But that's all I have prepared!" so the party can say "Okay, hand-wave us leaving and coming back at a higher level"


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Visanideth wrote:
As presented, I would take the left path, based on the premise that as your characters grow in power, so does the player in terms of skill.

This is only useful for a player's first ever campaign (and only if they're starting from level 1).

When I started PF1 I joined a campaign in progress, with a high level character to match the rest of the party. Then the campaign ended and I made a new low level character. I'm more experienced and skilled as a player, but I'm now fighting lower level opponents. Any baked in "survival is easy at low level and hard at high level" made the game balance worse for me, not better.

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