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I am hoping that the Paizo staff can weigh in on this. I have played through one AP and most of the way through another, and I am becoming frustrated with the insane difficulty of the combat encounters in these AP's. I do not want easy fights. I like challenging fights that you barely survive. It feels like an accomplishment. The problem is when every major encounter kills one or more party members (sometimes all but one) it starts to seem like hitting your head against a wall, plus your wbl dwindles as you are constantly paying to have characters revived. It no longer is fun anymore, and you end up with a completely different set of characters than you started with. This is with 5 to 6 players, and the AP's are designed for 4. Are these things even playtested? If they are, what do they consider a success? Anyone else experience this?
It really depends on the Adventure Path, some are far more difficult than others.
Adventure Paths are designed to be challenging to a mixed group of four characters (Divine caster, Arcane caster, skill monkey, and martial), and has traits that may be helpful to the campaign background (thus the free player guide downloads).
Still, some Paths are tougher than others. Reign of Winter is a meatgrinder, while some have reported Wrath of the Righteous as a walk in the park (due to the relatively new Mythic rules).
For the most part they are also designed for a medium level of experience from players (say, several years of serious Pathfinder / D&D 3.5 play).
I think there are a few variables that can go into a situation like you're talking about. Are you, or any of the other players at your table new to the game? Is anyone playing a class they are unfamiliar with? Has anyone optimized their characters, even partially? Granted, that last one is a slippery slope, and I do not want this to turn the focus towards optimization as sometimes happens, but even for players that prefer flavor/RP to optimization, a certain amount of optimization is needed for the character to be viable within a group. And if there was a yes to either of the first two questions, that can be the cause of inefficient characters and/or players while they try to figure out the class and/or the game. If you want some opinions on what might be the cause, you may want to give some details about the players at your table, and the characters they are running.
I've been running Rise of the Runelords on-and-off for almost 18 months, with only three players and the only time they were even remotely close to a TPK was the first encounter inside the clock tower at the end of book 2. And that only occurred because every encounter up to that one had been a cakewalk and I increased the fights CR a bit too much.
For us, Wrath of the Righteous has shifted rather violently between "Walk in the Part" and "Meatgrinder." Then again, we're not a traditional party: we have a redeemer paladin, a paladin/oracle, a bellflower tiller rogue (me), and a slayer (ACG). No arcane magic made this one swarm-heavy area EXTREMELY difficult. Then again, we burn through anything that allows us to focus on a single target: double smites and double sneak attacks do that. ;-)
We actually just finished our second trial, and the mythic monster we fought for THAT nearly killed two of our four party members. Old Roguey McSneakAttack (me) got the killing blow on that one thanks to a well-timed Surprise Strike.
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I am starting to think that if you run an ap and want it to be successful, you have to have an ultra optimized party or rebuild all the major encounters from scratch. That defeats the purpose of running an ap. This is a failure on the part of paizo. The adventures should be challenging instead of deadly. I know it's a fine line, and there are a lot of variables, but they are supposed to be the experts. I wonder if third party AP's are better? Anyone have experience with those?
I am starting to think that if you run an ap and want it to be successful, you have to have an ultra optimized party or rebuild all the major encounters from scratch. That defeats the purpose of running an ap. This is a failure on the part of paizo. The adventures should be challenging instead of deadly. I know it's a fine line, and there are a lot of variables, but they are supposed to be the experts. I wonder if third party AP's are better? Anyone have experience with those?
I think they toe that fine line pretty well given the variety of opinions I've seen on the difficulty level of APs. It's definitely not an objective "failure." But if you're not happy, feel free to give 3PPs a chance. I've heard some are really good. If you post in that forum, I'm sure people would be happy to point you in the right direction.
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I am starting to think that if you run an ap and want it to be successful, you have to have an ultra optimized party or rebuild all the major encounters from scratch. That defeats the purpose of running an ap. This is a failure on the part of paizo. The adventures should be challenging instead of deadly. I know it's a fine line, and there are a lot of variables, but they are supposed to be the experts. I wonder if third party AP's are better? Anyone have experience with those?
Paizo are experts at creating interesting and cool stories for campaigns and turning those stories into a solid game foundation for a baseline group. Your GM is supposed to be the expert on customizing that baseline for your group, including things like group size, composition, play style, etc. Expecting Paizo to create an AP that's perfect for your group every time is naive.
-Skeld
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I am starting to think that if you run an ap and want it to be successful, you have to have an ultra optimized party or rebuild all the major encounters from scratch. That defeats the purpose of running an ap. This is a failure on the part of paizo. The adventures should be challenging instead of deadly. I know it's a fine line, and there are a lot of variables, but they are supposed to be the experts.
I think the problem is they're producing adventures for an extremely wide spectrum of players. In our case, finishing an AP without a half dozen TPKs is inconceivable. We just dont have the system mastery or interest in building PCs that most would consider "adequate" let alone optimised. I suspect your group is down near us in terms of effectiveness. In contrast, there are many groups with a very high degree of system knowledge and the time and energy to utilise that and build synergistic teams of highly effective characters - I suspect they'd go through them with a few stifled yawns.
Ultimately, I've come to see APs as not time savers so much as creativity savers. You dont really gain much time (since you need to tweak the adventure to suit your players and their system knowledge plus quirks of party composition). However, you dont have to come up with plots, settings and NPCs.
I dont know if that's paizo's view or not, but viewed that way this phenomenon isnt really a "failure on the part of paizo" so much as an example of a mismatch between customer expectations and publisher design goals.
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I find it utterly hilarious that this thread is going on at the same time the thread in the Wrath forum is going on about how Mythic makes Wrath way too easy and people are curbstomping their way through every encounter in two or less rounds.
I wonder if third party AP's are better? Anyone have experience with those?
To be honest, I have very little experience, however in my view it's a system thing not a publisher thing. High level modules from any publisher include encounters we just have no chance against. (Do you find the first couple of instalments of paizo APs to be deadly?)
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I find it utterly hilarious that this thread is going on at the same time the thread in the Wrath forum is going on about how Mythic makes Wrath way too easy and people are curbstomping their way through every encounter in two or less rounds.
Yep! It just goes to show that Paizo's probably doing about right with the difficulty of their APs.
In all the AP's we've been through there have been some rather hard fights, and even a TPK, but most of the time I think if our party works together, we pass through most of the encounters without too much trouble.
There is the occasional almost TPK (and an actual one that I've had), but to tell the truth, the AP's don't seem that bad with us, and I wouldn't say that we play like system masters (though there are some that probably have a good grasp at it...IF they wanted to play like that...but we don't).
I'd say the difficulty is just about right no the money for the groups I've played with.
Before declaring "Haha, Paizo is doing it just right!", I'd first ask Cory what kind of parties were going through those AP's, if those problems were happening at all levels or just during the first half of the AP and if his GM was heavily modifying the AP. But that's just me, I guess those questions are hard for some people.
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A variety of types of parties. Many are not hard core gamers, but they are competent. Usually 5-6 players. I have heard a number of experienced players that love to number crunch and optimize in other groups bemoan the constant character deaths in AP's as well. I wonder how much is the fault of the 3.x system, and how much is it a "killer DM" attitude with Paizo/AP authors.
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I am starting to think that if you run an ap and want it to be successful, you have to have an ultra optimized party or rebuild all the major encounters from scratch. That defeats the purpose of running an ap. This is a failure on the part of paizo. The adventures should be challenging instead of deadly. I know it's a fine line, and there are a lot of variables, but they are supposed to be the experts. I wonder if third party AP's are better? Anyone have experience with those?Paizo are experts at creating interesting and cool stories for campaigns and turning those stories into a solid game foundation for a baseline group. Your GM is supposed to be the expert on customizing that baseline for your group, including things like group size, composition, play style, etc. Expecting Paizo to create an AP that's perfect for your group every time is naive.
-Skeld
I don't expect it to be perfect, but the AP not being about how long a list of character obituaries it can rack up would be nice.
A variety of types of parties. Many are not hard core gamers, but they are competent. Usually 5-6 players. I have heard a number of experienced players that love to number crunch and optimize in other groups bemoan the constant character deaths in AP's as well. I wonder how much is the fault of the 3.x system, and how much is it a "killer DM" attitude with Paizo/AP authors.
Really? All I ever hear from groups that optimize is that they're breezing through the game.
We haven't had a single player die in Reign of Winter yet, and we're certainly not optimized. We've come close in one or two fights, but that's about it. And that's with my bard as the primary source of healing (the druid is going full combat focus). For those who have seen my story about how we breezed past a whole section of book 2 due to bardic bluff/diplomacy/forgery shenanigans and rule of cool, that's the exception for our group, not the norm. We generally dive head on into combat.
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I don't expect it to be perfect, but the AP not being about how long a list of character obituaries it can rack up would be nice.I am starting to think that if you run an ap and want it to be successful, you have to have an ultra optimized party or rebuild all the major encounters from scratch. That defeats the purpose of running an ap. This is a failure on the part of paizo. The adventures should be challenging instead of deadly. I know it's a fine line, and there are a lot of variables, but they are supposed to be the experts. I wonder if third party AP's are better? Anyone have experience with those?Paizo are experts at creating interesting and cool stories for campaigns and turning those stories into a solid game foundation for a baseline group. Your GM is supposed to be the expert on customizing that baseline for your group, including things like group size, composition, play style, etc. Expecting Paizo to create an AP that's perfect for your group every time is naive.
-Skeld
Nowhere is that an implicitly or explicitly stated purpose of the APs. If you're finding the APs as hard as you say, then the fault rests with your GM for not adjusting them to your group's playstyle. That's one of the reasons GMs exist.
-Skeld
Trying to decide whether or not to be a smartass and suggest Slumbering Tsar or Rappan Athuk....
Doooo iiiiiitttt…..
I'm playing through carrion crown right now, and there has been little threat of a TPK.
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Nowhere is that an implicitly or explicitly stated purpose of the APs. If you're finding the APs as hard as you say, then the fault rests with your GM for not adjusting them to your group's playstyle. That's one of the reasons GMs exist.-Skeld
Something pretty much proven by the comments in this thread. Different groups are different, the book can't be written to handle them all. Just because the encounter says six orcs, doesn't mean the GM has to use six orcs, it's a guideline. If their players have been doing well, add in an extra one to ramp up the difficulty. If they've been getting their brains smashed in, take a couple of them away. Play them more intelligent, or play them dumber. Do whatever is needed to keep the game at an entertaining, interesting (and challenging, when appropriate) level for the group that happens to be at the table - that's the GM's job.
The first modules of Carrion Crown and Rise both were pretty hard. I'm playing Rise, so I don't know how they end up, but at level 13 things are pretty easy. Carrion Crown was a pushover after module three as well.
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The first modules of Carrion Crown and Rise both were pretty hard. I'm playing Rise, so I don't know how they end up, but at level 13 things are pretty easy. Carrion Crown was a pushover after module three as well.
Most APs in general are easy in the second half. Crafting gets in full-gear, character builds should have all finished coming together (which are usually specialized for the AP's standard enemies), and the casters have started hitting the high end of their power curve.
I ran the first adventure of Carrion Crown as a stand alone and it can be pretty difficult, especially the final encounter if the GM decides not to really look at and apply the tactics the boss is supposed to use. I had an overly large party (7 sometimes 6 usually) so they managed without any deaths even with my screw up of the final fight's suggested tactics. If I had run it as written it would have been a cakewalk so probably appropriately hard for 4 PCs.
Other than that one of the two times I ran kingmaker I did it for a party that included a bard, cavalier/ranger multi class, rogue/monk multi class, oracle, and someone else, and other than a will o' wisp random encounter at level 2 or 3 and 2 trolls at level 1 they had no trouble in the first two modules before their actions and my modifications so removed the game from its base that I can't really say I was still running the AP as written.
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Ultimately, there is an expectation that a GM will somewhat modify or tailor an AP for there specific group. Because Paizo can't possibly accommodate every playstyle/experience level/character build/rule usage. So I am inclined to think either the GM is not modifying things for his party, or he is intentionally ramping things up beyond the expected difficulty level.
Which APs are you finding to be meatgrinders?So far Carrion Crown and Rise of the Runelords.
To my knowledge (I stress I have naught but knowledge), RotRL is fine early on, later, is apparently ramps up a bit.
CC - currently playing through. If I had one criticism, I'd say it's swingy - encounters can either be curb-stomped or a challenge. That said, you tend (assuming you follow the expected progression) to have a long run of hints before something threatening comes up. Which, given the fact that horror fantasy is trope-filled as it gets, I find makes the whole thing predictable, for the most part - and knowing is half the battle, etc.It sounds patronizing and insulting, but my best advise for CC is pay attention. Which, for a horror campaign, seems right.
Playing Reign of Winter now and I'd say it's about middle of the road for difficulty in terms of surviving combat. Our PCs aren't overly optimized but we have a fairly non-standard character mix. Almost all of the players have decades of experience with gaming and a lot of 3E and/or PF experience. Party size is 5 characters: Witch, Cavalier, Druid, Gunslinger and Ranger (up until recently a different player with a Summoner). I haven't played or run any of the other APs but my take is they are pretty well balanced. But there are a lot of variables that can make any of the adventures swing one way or the other to include race/class/equipment/spell selection, player experience, GM experience, GM viciousness, luck of the dice, etc.
L.
I'm finding the Pathfinder APs to be a good deal more forgiving than Paizo's old Dungeon magazine APs. The "Age of Worms" was a legitimate meat-grinder*, with TPKs all over the place. Compared to that, "Rise of the Runelords" is written in easy mode. YMMV.
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I am starting to think that if you run an ap and want it to be successful, you have to have an ultra optimized party or rebuild all the major encounters from scratch. That defeats the purpose of running an ap. This is a failure on the part of paizo. The adventures should be challenging instead of deadly. I know it's a fine line, and there are a lot of variables, but they are supposed to be the experts. I wonder if third party AP's are better? Anyone have experience with those?
Actually no you don't. They assume about a medium level of system mastery. My players are very good at optimization and as written they tear through everything in most APs aside from a few proud nail encounters (the imp in Rise of the Runelords and the the air elemental on the bridge). Wrath of the Righteous was particularly easy but that's the result of designers severely underestimating mythic PCs.
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Basically, Paizo writes the APs for what they consider "average" characters, run by reasonably skilled players. I really think play skill - the ability to think on your feet, adapt to changing situations, and work as a cohesive team, plays a much larger role than character optimization in how "easy" a group finds an AP.
I think you can look at the iconics' writeups for an idea of how optimized the character builds are expected to be - and that's not very. Those character used to be provided as pregens in the old AP issues, so the expectation seems to be that the adventure was doable with those characters. The APs are also built around 15 PB so you can reduce the "difficulty level" by playing with more points.
Here's how I see it:
Unoptimized characters/poor players - deathfest
unoptimized characters/ok players - still pretty grindery
unoptimized characters/good players - very challenging but doable.
Middling characters/poor players - still deathfest
Middling characters/ok players - challenging but doable
middling characters/good players - mostly pretty easy, some fights challenging
Optimized characters/poor players - *
Optimized characters/ok or good players - easy to cakewalk
* - often I see groups whose characters are all "optimized" to maximize personal power/glory, but the players don't work together and spend so much effort trying to outshine each other that their effectiveness is actually diminished. Who cares if the wizard can do the rogue's job? If I have a party with a wizard and a rogue, the wizard is better off being a wizard and letting the rogue do his own job.
Tl;dr version: a skilled group can succeed at an AP with just about any old party you throw together.
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I have GM'd Shackled City, and Curse of the Crimson Throne to completion and Rise of the Runelords and Age of Worms past the half-way point. I have played and completed Savage Tide, Second Darkness, and Jade Regent and currently play Carrion Crown. We have had character deaths and maybe one almost TPK. Jade Regent was the only AP my PC did not die in, and I was below zero multiple time in all of them.
I do not consider, in any way, any of the chapters of these AP's meat grinders. IMHO most PC deaths are directly related to bad luck (x3 crit with a lance) or a bad idea (moving into the open field with enemy cavalry within charging distance vs. taking cover like the rest of the party)
Our current Carrion Crown party is anything but "optimized" (that word and "build" always leave a bad taste in my mouth). We had a kick-butt 12 round battle at the end of book 3 in which my PC died. Why did he die? Two reason. Fate - Vampiric Touch crit and bad play on my part. Became impatient and made my move on the bad guy one round to early.
End result I died - but it was an awesome, fun kick-butt fight and now I get to role-play my PC's touch with death since I was raised.
Which APs are you finding to be meatgrinders?So far Carrion Crown and Rise of the Runelords.
A few questions:
1) What were the parties in each one AP?2) Was it anniversary RotRL or the original?
3) Was carrion crown that difficult at books 4+?
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I think it likely that the OP's problem lies just behind the screen ;-)
Actually, I think my GM would be VERY interested in talking with the OP's GM about heightening the lethality of RotRL, since he feels we are carelessly trampling all his boosted and multiplied monsters ;-)
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Yeah, I almost universally hear the opposite complaint, with people thinking the APs are too easy.
Having run bits of Legacy of Fire and Curse of the Crimson Throne...I find them just about right. My PC groups are fairly optimized and still don't make a cakewalk of them (though they've managed not to have any deaths as of yet, aside from one due to PC stupidity). Of course, some of that likely comes from the conversion process from 3.5, which lets me tweak things a bit...but only a bit is necessary.
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The groups I play with or run for generally average 1-3 deaths per AP, and those tend to be at high levels and get fixed. We have a lot more close calls/near things. That seems about right to me.
I've played in some meatgrinders. I was in a 3.0 Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil game where we had 18 deaths for 6 players.
Cory, dry those tears mate and take a look at hero points.
I started using hero points about 1/2 way through Shackled City - and I think it helped. It gave the players some opportunities to decide when their PCs really wanted to lay some extra mojo on the line.
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I've run or played 8 AP's, and every one of them was too easy and had to be toughened up by the GM. The amount of players varies from 4 to 6, but we have some meta-gamers and every player has years of RPG experiences.
I'm running RotR, Jade, Shattered Star, and Reign of Winter. None seem like meat grinders at this point (we're at Book 2 or 3 in most of those) and we've had about average character deaths in those (one or two in each AP or thereabouts).