silver_diamond's page

Well as it happened we all talked it over after the latest TPK and we decided on a new campaign with clearly defined goals and the like. I want to thank everyone for the great advice though, I really appreciate it.

Scavion, I agree with you about the loot. I'd been giving them less loot than normal for their level since they had two crafters and I'd expected them to make their own gear, but when they wound up crafting nothing except adding enhancement bonuses I overcorrected and gave them too much loot. I think the wand was good but I agree the rest was a mistake. I will say that the crafting players built their characters to be crafters even before the campaign began; they didn't pick up those feats later. On the note of five character changes, I think I may have miscommunicated. One player left entirely. One player joined. One player swapped his character. That should be the sum total of character shifitng; you are right about not being attached to a certain extent. The player who swapped has a reputation in our group for having no attachment to his characters.

Nyerkh, you were right about different expectations. They really liked the exploration and history/mystery aspects, as well as interacting with NPCs. They DID like combat, at least that's what they told me. I believe them because they were actually working together and working smart in the final dungeon; even taking a full day to prepare themselves (though in the end some unlucky die rolls and one hasty mistake did them in). A few players mentioned afterwards that they felt the party dynamic (in game, not between the actual players) was a bit toxic, so perhaps it's for the best that we're changing stories. We talked about expectations for the new campaign. It's a lower level and slower xp progression with a small town guard. Everyone is on the same page and this time the characters actually all get along.

Wish me luck.

I'm not confident that this is all on the players. It's homebrew, and encounter design is an art.

From in this thread:

12 dretches = 12 CR2 = 6 cr4 = 3 cr 6 ~ cr 9. Ok, well and good. But 12 dretches = 12 stinking clouds... Even if the PC's are optimized to make the DC 13 on anything but a 1, you can expect 1/2 the PC's to be nauseated as of rd 1... I don't know the party APL when they had this encounter, but...

A magma dragon with a minimum hoard of 125000 gp (wand of restoration = 26000 gp minimum, Greater strand of beads 98600 gp), even at a dragon's triple treasure, that's a CR18'ish hoard... Again, I don't know the party APL (but it is apparently currently 10).

It occurs to me that there might be a reason they are overfocusing on #'s optimization as opposed to diversity...

Not to mention, you say they do their scouting, research, and prep but they keep getting blindsided... They may not be dumb - they know the DM has infinite options to surprise them with, and they can't prepare for all of them...So they are loading up their core competencies and hoping for the best.

Great points, so I'll try to clarify some of this. Also, in case you missed it, I have run other published campaigns with this group, such as Emerald Spire and Mummy's Mask, and the problems don't change any. Instead of complaining about my homebrew world, they just complain that Pathfinder adventure writers write unbalanced books.

Anyway, you're right about the dretches, but they ran away during the second round of combat (and actually managed to get enough distance to truly flee) so I don't know what would have happened if they stayed to fight. They were level 9 at the time.

Due to the way they've gone about exploring (and the fact that most of the game is in wilderness without enemies to loot) they were a bit behind in terms of loot. By a couple levels actually. I therefore made an ad hoc adjustment to the treasure for that one encounter to bring them in line with what they should have already had. Moreover, they knew about the magma dragon from day one and after a few in game months of recon they knew they would need to be around 9th level or so to be able to really challenge it.

I would agree with your statement that they are afraid of the infinite options that may attack them, but they've only been blindsided once or twice. They are perfectly aware of what creature types exist, and the encounters where they truly complain the most about difficulty are actually the encounters where they knew what they were getting into ahead of time (e.g. the oni, the magma dragon "it can fly and only the gunslinger and wizard have ranged", etc).

Expecting every player to be prepared for every type of enemy at every moment is quite frankly, unreasonable. You are more likely to lose players if you try to force the issue.

That said... if the group repeatedly encounters enemies with the same weaknesses and strengths and doesn’t prepare for them, then their fate is on them, not you... even the most focused and specialized group should be keen enough to pick up on a trend and prepare to counter it... on the other hand if you are throwing enemies with a varried array of strengths and weaknesses at them at every turn... then you may need to tone things back... if one encounter acid is your best friend, but the next it is useless and cold is your only hope, followed immediately by magic immunity... there is no hope that your players will prepare for everything. Let them specialize, and stick to a fairly predictable setup... allow them to learn that they need x and y at all times instead of expecting them to bring everything and the kitchen sink...

I agree, but when your party says that a creature with lightning immunity (a group of 12 dretches by the by) feels like a personal attack on the character because his best spell is elec based, my view is that the issue isn't that they aren't prepared for every type of enemy. It's that they aren't prepared for any type of enemy that isn't a point and shoot problem like a goblin or gnoll. So far they've mostly faced demons, daemons, and magical beasts, with a couple other creature types thrown in from time to time. Oh, also a couple of dragons, one random, two sought out. The random one they curb stomped. The other two almost killed them.

Haven't they even heard of the Big Six? They have no stat boosting items? No cloaks of protection?

If they refuse to learn, you should start a new campaign using inherent bonuses, so no need to spend money on boring but necessary pluses. That would also take care of the Cloak of Resistance issue.

Funny you should mention that - they have. It's one of the few wondrous items they actually save up for, Artofregicide was right about that aspect of minmaxing, though with how much they get beat up I'm not sure they really qualify as minmaxers.

I didn't think about the inherent bonuses idea, but now that you mention I think that's what I'm going to do if there's a TPK again. I do like the story of this campaign, and I know the party does too, but I've given them so many MacGuffins that I think starting fresh with a much lower level (again) and the inherent bonus system might be a good idea.

My biggest worry about starting low level is actually the party. They complain all the time about how low level play is no fun because everything can kill you and you have no options. I'm inclined to agree, but I also don't get myself killed at level 8 fighting a CR 8 monster.

Thanks for all the advice guys, I think I'm going to have to agree with the tough love approach. Just to clear the air on player experience, this is not a new party. They have all played multiple campaigns, two starting at level 1, one starting at level 11, and this one. Absolutely none are new to this system though some have a year or two more experience than others. This has in fact been a recurring problem that has somehow become worse with this campaign. Two campaigns ago we played Mummy's Mask (though a very stupid TPK involving intentionally setting off a trap at the end of book 2 ended that) and they made good use of everything they could find, even if they weren't the most imaginative group I've ever had, which did come back to bite them once or twice.

I thought they would be more creative in this campaign because two players leaned into crafting magic and one crafts mundane weapons, but they've somehow become LESS interested in using unusual gear.

TL;DR the party isn't new to the game and has gone from appreciating wands and consumables to ignoring most forms of gear.

Sorry to be back here griping so soon after my last query, but I think this issue might be relevant to more people than just me so maybe it can help other GMs with similar issues. I'm going to run down what I think my players are doing wrong and give some examples of how I've tried to help. Then you guys can tell me where I went right, where I went wrong, and what has worked for y'all in the past.

I'm running a kingdom building and exploration campaign in a homebrew world with a party of five. They recently hit level ten (they started at fifth) and it's been a rough ride. Party composition has changed around some since one player changed his character, one player left, and another player is joining next session, but it looks roughly like this: wizard, ranged martial, occultist/fighter multiclass, disciple of the pike cavalier, melee martial. Ranged martial was a thrower, now a gunslinger. Melee martial was a brawler, he left and the player joining is a melee focused warpriest.

I am really loathe to say someone is playing wrong or GMing wrong because we all have our styles and wants but I think I can safely say their playing wrong. Every player has nearly died many times, everyone has died at least once, and a few players have died more than once. There has been one TPK and one effective TPK though technically a few were still alive; they were just permanently out of commission. During the two TPK events, the party had, coincidentally, met with a powerful entity. The first was a patron demigod and the second was a fae lord. In both cases, they were able to bargain for their resurrection/healing for some price. In the other deaths they bought scrolls or paid for casting of spells. I've also been generous on a couple occasions behind the screen and fudged some otherwise lethal rolls against party members. Perhaps that was too generous of me, IDK.

With all this death and danger, I'd thought they might realize that they aren't diversifying their options. They spend all the money they get on four things: better weapons, better armor, scrolls (for the wizard to copy and that's it), and crafting (wizard crafts wondrous items and armor and weapons, occultist crafts healing potions). They aren't interested in anything that isn't those four things.

For example, they were fighting oni last time, and I knew no one had fire or acid attacks (occultist doesn't have evocation and wizard is from the metal school) so I stuck in a wand of acid arrow with 14 charges halfway through the adventure so they could finish off the rest without using their torches (which I had to remind them they had since no one could think of how to deal fire damage). Another example comes from fighting a magma dragon. In the hoard they found, among other things a wand of restoration and a strand of prayer beads (greater version, and they know what it does). They decided no one needed the prayer beads and since no one in the party had the spell on their list, they decided to toss out the wand. One of the players mentioned that the warpriest joining next week could use it. The wizard mentioned that the party didn't know she was joining so it didn't matter. I mentioned that they have two allied NPCs who can use the wand and would be more than happy to use it on them when they are at home base so they don't have to keep paying for that spell. They decided to sell the wand anyway. They wound up being unable to sell the beads because the town doesn't have the money to buy that, but they still view it as "useless to us."

So my problem is that they want to go out and adventure and come back and craft up new items for themselves, but no one is using the stuff they get that's useful and no one is actually crafting useful items anyway. They all hoard money until they have enough to buy the next +1 enhancement for their gear or they HAVE to pay for healing or spellcasting. How do I show them that they need to have a diverse set of gear? One of my favorite features of Pathfinder is that even the most inflexible build can become somewhat adaptable with some magic gear. Oils of alignment, potions of invisibility, wands with useful spells, rings with niche but super beneficial powers, these things give the party the power to face anything because someone always has something useful on hand. I can't figure out how to get the party to understand that the reason their coming closer to dying more and more is because they haven't diversified their gear since they started the campaign.

Or maybe this is all in my head. The encounters look fairly balanced on paper from what I can tell. No one has complained that fights are unbalanced. Suggestions anyone?