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Too many TPKs! I wasn't even being very cruel, they were just all being stupid. They crammed everyone onto the cage in the Kopru Ruins, it broke right at the top (nat 1 on its fort save) then the Skulvyn ate them. (4 tail lashes!?)
We won't restart this game again, and it's just too important to keep the same characters through it or the story kinda flops. I'm doing my own self-made Adventure Path now, it'll finish up my home-brew world so we can start on the Pathfinder campaign setting in August.
I know James & co have learned a lot since SCAP so I'm looking forward to the new pathfinder stuff (and hopefully contributing to it one day)but SCAP is just too deadly to this group of players on top of its others problems (surprise! new villain! etc)
I understand their feelings. I ran a group through the RttToEE and through bad luck and bad choices, they lost 17 characters, including 5 complete TPKs, two of those TPKs in the same game session!!
After that, they refused to play that campaign anymore, cursing Monte Cook (the writer) and myself. I felt their pain. I certainly wouldn't enjoy creating a new character every other game session.
Just how many TPKs did your group suffer before they revolted?
What makes you think Pathfinder will go any easier on your group? ::insert evil DM laugh::
Perhaps you can start a new campaign and merge it back into the Shackled City at the Zenith Trajectory point.
Of the three groups I'm currently running, one has this problem all the time. They simply don't get the concept of buffing up before encounters. The also insist on pressing forward when they should retreat, and are lousy at managing their resources.
I fixed the problem by giving them double hit points. It sounds kinda over-the-top (and it is), but it keeps them going and everyone's having a great time.
Wow, my PCs are the opposite; I have to intentionally pull out all the stops to even come close to killing them, and then it's really a matter of luck, good on mine or bad on theirs.
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We rotate DMs in our group (all of us running different games) and when I'm a player I can usually whip the others into a cohesive fighting force (we're tearing our way through Ravenloft) of course it means I always have to play a leader type character =p
We had two runthroughs, the first runthrough one player had to reroll 7 times. It ended with a TPK at Dugobras. We switched out a few players at that time and a few months had gone by before I decided to hit the reboot button.
Second runthrough we had two die in Jzadirune, one in Malachite, one to Drakthar, and just when everything was going really well and everyone was loving their characters (I was putting out two newspapers for them to read, one of which was a tabloid and turned out hilarious) we had the TPK at the beginning of Kopru.
I'd been talking about my own AP (called Fiendish Minds) that I'd been working on for quite some time as it will focus very little on dungeons and more on mounted combat and Heroes of Battle stuff (including a material plane invasion of Azzagrat) and they're all demanding that I start it now.
I had to soup everything up beyond ludicrosity to give the PCs a challenge at all.
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I've always been a fan of fast-paced & unforgiving tournament type of campaigns. In my campaigns, there are alot of deaths early on but that number dwindles over time. Reason? After every session, i go out of my way to point out to the players their mistakes and what they should have done--usually according to their respective class/s--to have avoided or minimized bad situation/s all together.
Thoth-Amon
It's funny how different groups work. I've also had to buff up several parts to keep it challenging for the characters. We've just finished chapter 3 without a single death (though several near things.)
I will note that I use the wound system, and action points. These add some fun, and balance the module out in my opinion.
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I really believe the relative difficulty of an adventure or AP for that matter truly depends on two main components no written material can ever fully cover: the tactics and ingenuity of the players and the way the DM runs the game (and thus understands the rules).
IF a group of players has a TPK, that alone is a sign that there has to be a major modification of the group's tactics. Maybe they overlooked the synergy of their PCs. Maybe some key characters were really underpowered. Maybe the tactics used by the players themselves just plain sucked, but SOMETHING has to be clearly modified in their approach of the campaign.
If the DM thinks they're having too much of a hard time, then by all means, he can make things easier on them and simplify the encounters they face! You are, as the DM, the best judge of what's going on at the table, and you can know what's going wrong when it does by simply watching how the players play the game. You can discuss it with them and/or adapt the game materials to the specificities of the players and characters group. I find it shocking that it would take 17 character deaths for the DM AND the players to start discussing about what's going wrong, for instance, and instead of just blaming the adventure for it, I think it's much better for the DM to either 1/ help the players fix what's going wrong with them or 2/ modify the adventure's content to fit the players' style.
If the DM thinks they're having too much of a hard time, then by all means, he can make things easier on them and simplify the encounters they face! You are, as the DM, the best judge of what's going on at the table, and you can know what's going wrong when it does by simply watching how the players play the game. You can discuss it with them and/or adapt the game materials to the specificities of the players and characters group. I find it shocking that it would take 17 character deaths for the DM AND the players to start discussing about what's going wrong, for instance, and instead of just blaming the adventure for it, I think it's much better for the DM to either 1/ help the players fix what's going wrong with them or 2/ modify the adventure's content to fit the players' style.
Excellent analysis. I concur wholeheartedly.
I also agree with Benoist Poire's analysis. At the most basic level, the game is about having fun. If the group isn't having fun, something is definitely wrong.
My group just went down into Jzadirune for the first time, and got knocked around pretty hard. Comments like "This is a dungeon for 1st level characters?" or "You MUST give us Wands of healing or something to help us" flew my way. While I understood their troubles, I also pointed out that they had refused to spend money on healing potions due to greed, and due to pride had refused to ask for help from the local clerics.
So, the players needed to understand that the tactics they chose were not helping them to succeed. Since then, the cleric in the group has taken Scribe Scroll as a feat, and plans to create a number of healing scrolls for insurance, while the wizard is creating a number of knock scrolls to help with the doors.
Obviously, there are times when I do modify the content to make things easier (I will admit that I did not use the adhesive nature of the mimic, as it would have made the combat horrific instead of merely tense). I tend to like to hide these things, allowing the players to believe they are succeeding on their own. There are times when the group should retreat and there are times when they will amaze you with ingenuity. At the same time, I do not back down when the players choose to do things their own way. I just apply appropriate consequences.
Hopefully you will find the balance between helping the players too much and TPKs on a regular basis for your players to have fun.
We have found that the advancement pace of the Adventure Paths is too fast for the players (at least in our groups) to become really tactically capable with their characters, and this increases the chance of a TPK. Putting in side adventures which are not as difficult as the main line can really help here.
We actually did SCAP through Zenith without a TPK, but with increasingly loud and unhappy "this is too hard" comments from the player, and the game nearly collapsed after Zenith. It took strenuous efforts from both player and GM to salvage it.
Speaking only for my own enjoyment as a player (and GM), if the only way to survive the scenario is to play an extremely careful, tactically and strategically optimized style of game, I'm not very interested in playing. It's too tiring and emotionally demanding for a recreational activity.
In AoW my group had a double TPK in Hall of Harsh Reflections. The player did what is often recommended: he analyzed his strategy, looked at his PCs' weaknesses, and figured out how to optimize everything to reduce the chance that this would happen again. It hasn't; he cuts through nearly everything with ease (we are midway through Longshadow now. But the game is noticably less fun for both him and me than it used to be, and I'm sad about that. I wish I had toned down the problem encounter rather than letting it drive us into this result.
One problem we're having is that nearly a quarter of each session is taken up with bookkeeping the buff spells. He's bought a lot of wands, and has to track durations for those and for the cast spells among his PCs and cohorts. The bookkeeping is fairly boring, especially after the third or fourth time. But it can't quite be reduced to a pre-planned set, both because the PCs go up levels too often, and because they have to fine-tune the buffs to each scenario for maximum effect.
Another problem is that the heavy reliance on buffs, most of which are short duration in v3.5, means a huge pressure to run through encounters as fast as possible (so as to get more than one encounter per set of buffs). This means that during a strike the PCs do not look at murals, search rooms (unless stymied), talk to NPCs or each other, or do anything else that would give some color: they are fixated on getting through to the next encounter. (They normally scout so heavily that they know where everything is and how to get there; they don't rush in blind.) This is dead boring for the GM, and probably isn't making the player happy either.
They were a lot more fun to run for before they were optimized. But after the double TPK, I can't possibly blame my player for doing it--what else could he do, other than quit?
It's hard to judge Adventure Path difficulty by other groups' experiences, because they are all over the map: some people breeze through things that are implacably lethal to others. (I don't think my player handled HoHR badly, but his PCs were simply not up to it.) But if you start to see that for your own group the scenarios are too hard, I think it's sensible to make changes and not just watch the campaign tank. And "too hard" does not even require TPK. Zenith nearly killed our SCAP campaign despite the PCs winning with only one PC death. It was no fun whatsoever for the player, and what's the point of gaming if it's a miserable experience?
Mary
I WISH I had TPKS at this point. I wish I had combat at all! I'm three sessions into the AP, and my characters haven't managed to figure out where the kidnapped kids have gone yet. They're too busy meeting every NPC in the city, bothering the nobles, and trying to infiltrate the Last Laugh.
I think after running them through Red Hand of Doom the last six months, they are going crazy with all of the freedom a city campaign affords them.
I WISH I had TPKS at this point. I wish I had combat at all! I'm three sessions into the AP, and my characters haven't managed to figure out where the kidnapped kids have gone yet. They're too busy meeting every NPC in the city, bothering the nobles, and trying to infiltrate the Last Laugh.
I think after running them through Red Hand of Doom the last six months, they are going crazy with all of the freedom a city campaign affords them.
Your group sounds like a lot of fun to run. Taking initiative and exploring like that. I'm sure this will be a huge boon near the end of the campaign. For now, though, perhaps some slight pushing towards Ghelve's locks? Maybe one of the leads they are following to inflitrate the last laugh could take them there? Perhaps an emesary from cauldron's best known thieves guild could be heading for Kazmojen to deliver a message or a warning of some sort?
>> I WISH I had TPKS at this point. I wish I had combat at all! I'm three sessions into the AP, and my characters haven't managed to figure out where the kidnapped kids have gone yet. They're too busy meeting every NPC in the city, bothering the nobles, and trying to infiltrate the Last Laugh.
I think I went four full sessions during the Flood Festival doing the same thing. The party was busy meeting, scheming, following up, and anything but combat.
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I think I went four full sessions during the Flood Festival doing the same thing. The party was busy meeting, scheming, following up, and anything but combat.
Todd, that's because we never felt we could trust anyone!!! And you played Todd V as a real good creep, and the Fario and Felian thing was an enigma wrapped up in a mystery that gave us all pause - add in the dwarven tension with the brew and weapons commerce we quickly believe anyone and everyone was a suspect!
It was fun though - all of it. I just wish I could have been a part of it throughout the whole thing.
Robert
Your group sounds like a lot of fun to run. Taking initiative and exploring like that. I'm sure this will be a huge boon near the end of the campaign. For now, though, perhaps some slight pushing towards Ghelve's locks? Maybe one of the leads they are following to inflitrate the last laugh could take them there? Perhaps an emesary from cauldron's best known thieves guild could be heading for Kazmojen to deliver a message or a warning of some sort?
My group gives me an ice cream headache, but they are incredibly fun. They finally got into Jzadirune last night. Although when the dwarven paladin found out that they were going to have to break into Ghelve's locks, he tried to go to the city guard and request they open the door for the party. Stupid Lawful Good characters.
This thread provides a perfect picture of what's missing in 3e. In the old days (1e and before) every character of every class was practically identical. Of course, lots of players complained about this and everyone wrote new rules to distinguish their characters. The result was a glorious hodgepodge of unique and fascinating PCs, each with unique and fascinating abilities.
Then along comes 3e and 3.5e. While I must admit I like the rules much better and that they are much more consistent, much easier to use as both DM and player, and allow for much more diversity, there is a problem. Nowadays the emphasis is on character build rather than character development. Since the average player is more familiar with video games than with literature, characters are designed to be effective in tactical situations rather than in relational situations. Similarly, adventures are written to simulate the pace and excitement of video games and movies. Hence, even if you do put the emphasis on character development rather than character build your DM will have to redesign everything he buys to accommodate the new style of play.
What does this have to do with TPKs? It is now much easier to have a TPK with the new style of play. DMs have a much harder time tailoring their adventures to their players, since doing so requires all sorts of material be fitted into the adventure they've purchased. Published adventures and the RAW insist on rapid character advancement in order to create more exciting and captivating products. Players are forced to give in to the "better character build" philosophy in order to handle what the DM throws at them. Monsters, traps, and other situations are much more deadly, since designers have to assume their players have optimum or near-optimum character builds.
My recommendation? Take apart every adventure or AP you purchase. Insert an encounter or three between every major encounter or three that you find there. Make sure they fit in properly. Slow down the plot so the characters have a chance to rest between encounters. Give them plenty of time in town to roleplay and develop relationships with NPCs and each other. Cut the number of XP you award in half. Allow for multiple side treks to be inserted into the main plot. Spend too much time designing your campaign setting and writing it all down. Stop rushing to get through it all. Then sit back, relax, and let the game develop as it will. This ain't a video game, after all, and you don't have to make room for commercials.
Actually, my players kill everything that Dungeon throws at them. There's absolutely no reason why the PC's can't work together.
I think your problem is that there is a significant lack of teamwork on the part of your players.
One of my high level groups looks sort of like this. There's NO CLERIC.
They have a Paladin/Sorcerer/Fatespinner/Abjurant Champion/Mage Killer/Spellsword, they have a Paladin/Divine Crusader/Triadic Knight, They have a Fighter/Rogue/Dread Commando, They have a Ranger/Rogue/Divine Seeker, They have a Wizard/Loremaster/Argent Savant, They have a Dwarf Fighter/Rogue/Dark Hunter. Every combat looks like "Haste, Aggro, kill everything, let's check our damage."
Everything dies.
It's not how you build your character. Its how it works in conjunction with the others.
Actually, my players kill everything that Dungeon throws at them. There's absolutely no reason why the PC's can't work together.
I think your problem is that there is a significant lack of teamwork on the part of your players.
One of my high level groups looks sort of like this. There's NO CLERIC.
They have a Paladin/Sorcerer/Fatespinner/Abjurant Champion/Mage Killer/Spellsword, they have a Paladin/Divine Crusader/Triadic Knight, They have a Fighter/Rogue/Dread Commando, They have a Ranger/Rogue/Divine Seeker, They have a Wizard/Loremaster/Argent Savant, They have a Dwarf Fighter/Rogue/Dark Hunter. Every combat looks like "Haste, Aggro, kill everything, let's check our damage."
Everything dies.
It's not how you build your character. Its how it works in conjunction with the others.
I don't even recognize half these prestige classes.
"It's not how you build your character. Its how it works in conjunction with the others."
Yeah, I don't actually buy this. Play the AP 'core rules only' (Players Handbook only) with a 25 point buy. I bet your PCs are less effective, even when working as a team.
Adressing the OP.
I hope James and crew keep up with their traditionally tough APs. I feel its much easier to make the APs easier then it is to make them harder. Simply allowing your players high point buys and giving them an extra level or two should really cut into the number of character deaths. In short its comparitivly easy to make players more powerful but a fair amount of work to make an adventure easier or more difficult.
My group gives me an ice cream headache, but they are incredibly fun.
Reading this makes me all gigly inside
My group gives me an ice cream headache
:)
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Hello bubbagump! Your post made me react, so I'll post my comments here if you don't mind!
This thread provides a perfect picture of what's missing in 3e.
Strange. I think it shows the danger of just running an adventure without making any adaptation to the players' style or without having the players' adapt to the adventure whatsoever. Bottom line: it's a testimony to the dangers of the users' passivity in front of a RPG product.
In the old days (1e and before) every character of every class was practically identical. Of course, lots of players complained about this and everyone wrote new rules to distinguish their characters. The result was a glorious hodgepodge of unique and fascinating PCs, each with unique and fascinating abilities.
I don't think that's remotely true. Saves were all different, THAC0s were different, abilities and spells were widely different, XP charts were different...
Now, when considering two particular characters of a single particular class, this becomes much more accurate. I guess that's what you mean: comparing two characters of the same class (but then, that's not particularly true of spellcasters since they can select different spells from one another, and not particularly true of all characters actually, since most of the differentiation was based on the equipment the characters possessed).
Then along comes 3e and 3.5e. While I must admit I like the rules much better and that they are much more consistent, much easier to use as both DM and player, and allow for much more diversity, there is a problem. Nowadays the emphasis is on character build rather than character development.
That's not because you provide mechanical choices that one of these choices would have to become the focus of the game. Since things like character immersion and role-playing actually do not depend on game mechanics but on the group's involvement in the game and the resulting mood at the game table, this is another choice that is given to them instead of an option forced down their throats! Indeed, if the mechanics do not provide you choices, you would have to solely focus on what is not based on mechanics to make your character unique (role-playing, behavior etc). With 3rd edition you instead have now (more of) a choice in the matter: you can make your character unique through mechanics (equipment, feats, spells, skills etc etc), unique through role-playing, behavior, or unique through a combination of those things (the better option in my opinion).
Since the average player is more familiar with video games than with literature, characters are designed to be effective in tactical situations rather than in relational situations. Similarly, adventures are written to simulate the pace and excitement of video games and movies. Hence, even if you do put the emphasis on character development rather than character build your DM will have to redesign everything he buys to accommodate the new style of play.
First, I don't see what's exactly bad in enlarging the range of inspirations when designing RPG adventures. They suddenly did not cease to be inspired by literature. ALL the literature influences of older editions of DnD and more are still and now part of Third Edition.
Second, I don't see what's exactly bad in designing adventures that make sense on a tension level, with excitement, challenges, action, role-playing, thought, tactics, a combination of all these elements, instead of just relying on atmosphere to provide entertainment.
Once again, DMs and players now have a choice in the matter. Is it bad? Certainly not. Blaming the game because some of its users make a choice you don't like isn't a valid criticism of the game itself, I think.
What does this have to do with TPKs? It is now much easier to have a TPK with the new style of play. DMs have a much harder time tailoring their adventures to their players, since doing so requires all sorts of material be fitted into the adventure they've purchased. Published adventures and the RAW insist on rapid character advancement in order to create more exciting and captivating products. Players are forced to give in to the "better character build" philosophy in order to handle what the DM throws at them. Monsters, traps, and other situations are much more deadly, since designers have to assume their players have optimum or near-optimum character builds.
I think it is completely, utterly wrong, since it assumes the DM just throws things at the players without thinking things through before doing so. It doesn't take all sorts of game materials to replace some NPC spells selection, take a few HDs off, or just eliminate this or that monster or encounter from an adventure!
Furthermore, I do not think the game has become deadlier at all. There are much less "save or die" effects than earlier editions, there are less arbitrary effects, there are much more tools for the DM to scale his adventures (CR system mostly instead of flat XP values of monsters like in previous editions). I personally think that tools are there more than ever for the DM to tailor the content of the adventures to the specificities of the characters' group. All there is to do is to actually read the three core books and understand their contents (I'm thinking of the entire DMG and the appendices of the Monster Manual in particular, when speaking about the issue of scaling adventures).
My recommendation? Take apart every adventure or AP you purchase. Insert an encounter or three between every major encounter or three that you find there. Make sure they fit in properly. Slow down the plot so the characters have a chance...
Indeed that's a possibility. One can modify NPCs, take some monsters or NPCs off particular encounters, modify or eliminate entire encounters/traps/environment, replace, not use certain particularly lethal abilities of opponents pertaining to a particular PCs' group, and so on, so forth. The possibilities are all there. This has nothing to do with the rules themselves.
You guys are just determined to argue about this, aren't you?
Okay, here goes. I'm not going to take this point by point; I'm just going to hit a few high points.
By saying "all the characters were the same" it was a deliberately broad statement. Back then all fighters, for example, had exactly the same capabilities. The only differences were their ability scores, alignments, equipment, and physical descriptions. Beyond that, players distinguished their characters by how they were played. There were no rules for swashbucklers and that sort of thing, no feats, and very few other mechanisms for creating unique characters. Since there were only a few spells for each level in the PHB, most spellcasters had about the same spell selections.
A quick perusal of practically any messageboard will prove that the emphasis is, indeed, on character build rather than character development. That is not to say there's no roleplaying going on these days, only that back then you never heard discussions about which feat to take or which class to multiclass into, etc. Geez, give it a rest.
I also never said that video games were bad. I only said that the influences these days are different - not a complaint, just an observation.
Concerning the rules encouraging TPKs, as the owner of more than one game store and a roleplayer for 30 years, I have to say you're just dead wrong. Most players and DMs in my (current) experience use published products almost exclusively with relatively little or no alteration. While that has always been true (to an extent), the amount of time the average DM has to spend on customizing his adventures has decreased in the last 2-3 decades. Hence more DMs and players are relying more heavily on what's been published. Many DMs "just throw things at players" not because they want to, but because they have to.
I also didn't say that customizing the 3.5e rules was less possible. In fact, I feel it's easier than ever. It just happens less often and to less of an extent.
The point of my post was simply this: society has changed and D&D has changed with it (another observation, not a condemnation, so relax). If you want to play with the old philosophy you're going to have to monkey with the rules a bit and vice versa. My personal opinion is that I miss the old D&D philosophy. However, I prefer the current rules and perfectly understand the forces that have demanded the changes. Since I make money from it, I endorse it heartily.
I simply intended to suggest that if TPKs are happening too frequently you might consider changing your style of play rather than having to perform extensive "fixing" of such a tightly integrated rules system.
Sheesh! Now all you kids get off my lawn!
Concerning the rules encouraging TPKs, as the owner of more than one game store and a roleplayer for 30 years, I have to say you're just dead wrong. Most players and DMs in my (current) experience use published products almost exclusively with relatively little or no alteration. While that has always been true (to an extent), the amount of time the average DM has to spend on customizing his adventures has decreased in the last 2-3 decades. Hence more DMs and players are relying more heavily on what's been published. Many DMs "just throw things at players" not because they want to, but because they have to.
I'm not at all sure where you get this. My experience with 3.5 is that it requires more time and effort from the DM not less. Want a Lizard Folk Half-Black Dragon Shaman? No problem - the templates exist but it will take you 2 hours to stat it up to 8th level. In fact stating almost anything up will take a significant amount of time and might involve pouring over half a dozen books. The moment the game moves out of 1st - 4th level the monsters become significantly more complicated and its reflected in the published materials stat blocks which have gone from 12 line oversized paragraphs to things that can fill 1/2 a page or more. The amount of options available to the bad guys have grown exponentially but the DM has to step up to bat if they want to realize their goblin shaman double wand wielder.
In fact one of the things I have sometimes noticed on this board is that old school DMs often complain about just how much time and effort one has to put into the game. Back in the day I just grabbed a couple monsters from the monster manual and that was an encounter. You might go through some time and effort padding it out and adding features but that is the same in 3.5 as well. Maybe the big difference is that in 3.5 rules rarely existed for how something worked so each module essentially had unique rules on how to handled falling boulder traps and such.
Plus there are lots of DMs that run their own material or add side quests. For myself - my favourite activity is converting 1st and 2nd edition adventures into 3.5 ed. adventures for my players and its worth noting that by the time I finish writing the material out the 3.5 edition adventure is notably longer usually because it is some what more complex. In 3.5 everything can happen on a grid and when a complex multi part trap goes off one needs to deal with what that means on the table top. 1st edition monsters just don't cut it any more. Even when I'm just converting I have to throw in some templates and the ever present class levels. One does not just say that the chief hobgoblin gets an extra HD and leave it at that. No he gets class levels as does the shaman and his body guards.
Prep time is way up in my experience. Not least because I'm not 14 any more and I'm not DMing for 14 year olds. Beating down on the Orcs just 'cause their orcs does not cut it. High Fantasy has plots, fantastic locations, an endless stream of new and challenging monsters. Three encounters of four orcs in a row is practically a hanging offence these days – used to be that the written material would have things like 'All rooms marked C have 4 Orc guards' followed by a stat block of an orc guard.
As to the characters all being the same. I think that was semi-true but they sure were not the same in each party. The Multi-Classing rules allowed for a fair number of different styles of character.
I'm not at all sure where you get this....
What he said...
My GM recently had occasion to downlevel a scenario from one of the Adventure Paths.
The third encounter of the downleveled scenario wiped out the PCs (they had a Wish saved away and used it to avoid a TPK, but it was an utter defeat). We looked at the mechanics and saw that this outcome had been pretty much inevitable. Four advanced medusas appearing by surprise, four DC22 saves for every PC, and statistically, 3/4 of the party would be expected to fail at least one. (Which is exactly what happened.)
While the GM was trying to figure out why he made this mistake, he realized that he runs for two groups (both in SCAP, both of the same character level) and he'd been thinking of the other group's abilities; but on examination, those PCs have saving throws 4-5 points better, across the board, than mine do. His other players took rather precise sequences of base and prestige classes to run their saves up. Mine didn't.
It seems extraordinarily difficult to balance scenarios, in part because there are an awful lot of interactions and synergies, and in part because PC level is nearly meaningless as a guide to PC capabilities. Our Age of Worms and SCAP PCs are the same level, but the AoW party, which is considerably more optimized, would wipe the SCAP party out effortlessly--probably on the first round.
You can tone down the unpredictable lethality by fudging, and I think a lot of groups aren't fully aware just how much fudging they do. (It's interesting to look at the "My group beat the Killer Encounter" posts and see how many of them involved the GM forgetting about one of the creature's abilities, or allowing a few rules violations.) My group is highly adverse to fudging, so we get to see the lethality unfiltered, and we have consistent and severe problems with TPKs even if we give the PCs some extra edges and benefits. We also have the opposite problem--sometimes even with the same PCs in the same campaign.
I don't think, having experienced SCAP as a player and AoW as a GM, that I am ever again going to be willing to run 3.5 at its normal advancement rate and with the difficulty level of an Adventure Path. It just doesn't work for us. Putting a scenario in between each scenario of the Adventure Path might do the trick, or maybe two or three.
It's a shame. I think v3.5 is a big technical improvement over previous editions, but it has a couple of key features which are hard to remove and which are, for our group, probable game-killers.
Mary
My GM recently had occasion to downlevel a scenario from one of the Adventure Paths.
The third encounter of the downleveled scenario wiped out the PCs (they had a Wish saved away and used it to avoid a TPK, but it was an utter defeat). We looked at the mechanics and saw that this outcome had been pretty much inevitable. Four advanced medusas appearing by surprise, four DC22 saves for every PC, and statistically, 3/4 of the party would be expected to fail at least one. (Which is exactly what happened.)
While the GM was trying to figure out why he made this mistake, he realized that he runs for two groups (both in SCAP, both of the same character level) and he'd been thinking of the other group's abilities; but on examination, those PCs have saving throws 4-5 points better, across the board, than mine do. His other players took rather precise sequences of base and prestige classes to run their saves up. Mine didn't.
It seems extraordinarily difficult to balance scenarios, in part because there are an awful lot of interactions and synergies, and in part because PC level is nearly meaningless as a guide to PC capabilities. Our Age of Worms and SCAP PCs are the same level, but the AoW party, which is considerably more optimized, would wipe the SCAP party out effortlessly--probably on the first round.
You can tone down the unpredictable lethality by fudging, and I think a lot of groups aren't fully aware just how much fudging they do. (It's interesting to look at the "My group beat the Killer Encounter" posts and see how many of them involved the GM forgetting about one of the creature's abilities, or allowing a few rules violations.) My group is highly adverse to fudging, so we get to see the lethality unfiltered, and we have consistent and severe problems with TPKs even if we give the PCs some extra edges and benefits. We also have the opposite problem--sometimes even with the same PCs in the same campaign.
I don't think, having experienced SCAP as a player and AoW as a GM, that I am ever...
I think you have hit on what one really already sees on the message board. Groups that sweep through the AP like gangbusters, groups that have a tough time of it and groups that fall apart because they are being slaughtered mercilessly. It all really depends on how many splat books are in play, how optimized the character builds are and how much of an edge your DM gave you to begin with (either in terms of extra levels, extra magic or extra good stats).
Another factor is just how bad death is. In my games death is almost a benefit. Your character dies but by that point you have more information about what the AP is about - so you come back min/maxed to deal with the problem at hand - even loosing a level does not really make up for the fact that a character designed to deal with the kind of issues being faced in the adventure is just so much better at it then a character that is less focused. In the end my players can't help but win - they can roll up infinite characters but their are only a finite number of enemies in the AP. They'll win by attrition alone, but thats a pretty dry style of play. Works for my group but in this case no one actually thinks that the character they rolled up at first level has a snowball's chance in hell of living until the end of the AP. Every character rolled is already dead - we are just here to work out the details of that death and find out who his replacement it.
My players whine like b7tches because "there's no treasure" in the campaign. I'm happy with the amount in the game because I'm DMing powergamers and I need to keep the power in check to keep it a challenge. I've had 2 deaths so far, both in the Kopru ruins, 1st was a paladin killed in the lake trying unsuccessfully to swim away from the demon. The 2nd was the skeleton T-Rex crit'ing the wizard/cleric for over 40 points in one bite.
Good times.
We stopped a 2-year-long home brew campaign I was running to do Shackled City. I was tired of all the prep work to run a homebrew, and was anxious to sink my teeth into this really well-written campaign, that I had played in several months earlier. The homebrew was a RP-heavy road movie type of game, with character doing a LOT of travel, meeting interesting people, while each PC learned about their hidden past...in other words, tactics and powergaming not necessary.
Then we started the SCAP, and it was clear my core players were assuming that battle is nothing more than rolling to-hit and then blaming the dice when it doesn't work. They survived Kazmojen because the player with the most powerful PC (elan psion) had to quit the camp, and so I hesitantly NPC'ed him. The party was getting so badly beaten, and it was so easy for the psion to drop Kazmojen, that I went ahead and did it, preventing a TPK.
In the middle of Drakthar's way, we had a few players rotate out, and a few rotate in. The two new guys are tactic-minded, one with a really powerful build (soul-knife with vow of poverty), and the other with a knack for getting unbelievable mileage out of a simple priest of Pelor. Needless to say the priest eradicated Drakthar before I even got started...
Chapter 3 is going well, we're almost done, and the effectiveness of the priest and soul-knife has given the other players motivation not to be dead weight in combat. Our ranger just saved the day as Triel was about to pound the soul-knife into pudding.
I'm starting a campaign with ALL noobies (they just hit 4th level--their FIRST 4th ever) and I'm pretty stingy with the loot. They have no idea that I'm dealing below average booty and they're happy.
I don't forsee any trouble.
The character death that occured in this adventure happened at the cage as well, and is still talked about to this day. Semi random encounter gets the dwarf barbarian/fighter to swan dive off the ledge with the cage. On the way down he fails his grapple check withthe evil baddie, and smacks into the deck of boat in the pool. Not enough was left for the skulven. He did sink the boat though. All my players still laugh at his demise, especially him!
This and Zenith were my favorite adventures to DM in this path. Players came into thier own around here and this is when thier character concepts start to materialize.
My players are starting their 4th or 5th session in Jzadirune. The rogue is frustrated because she can't manage to pick any of the locks on the gear doors, but the group has a nice rhythm going where she disarms the traps, and then the dwarven paladin and the half-orc monk bash the door down. No party fatalities, not even when they fought the Grell. The warlock has been using a wand of burning hands he found, but has managed to makes his saves EVERY TIME to avoid contracting The Vanishing. I haven't even been able to hit them with any surprise attacks, as the paladin scans every room for evil before the party enters. So the only time they were taken by surprise was the Dread Guard.
They're being so thorough, I'm convinced they will be 4th level before they meet Kazmojen.
My players are starting their 4th or 5th session in Jzadirune. The rogue is frustrated because she can't manage to pick any of the locks on the gear doors, but the group has a nice rhythm going where she disarms the traps, and then the dwarven paladin and the half-orc monk bash the door down.
The rogue in my group can actually pick the locks on the gear doors. At 2nd level, he has 5 ranks, +3 Dex, and +2 from masterwork lockpicks he filched off of Kheygan, for a total of +10. That means if he takes 20 he can pick the locks. Pretty cool. Of course, he still has to worry about the traps :>
No party fatalities, not even when they fought the Grell. The warlock has been using a wand of burning hands he found, but has managed to makes his saves EVERY TIME to avoid contracting The Vanishing. I haven't even been able to hit them with any surprise attacks, as the paladin scans every room for evil before the party enters. So the only time they were taken by surprise was the Dread Guard.
I've had the skulks more mobile and proactive, sometimes sneaking up on the party from behind, so surprised characters are par for the course so far!
There's only been one death so far in my game, which came in the surprise round of the very first combat in Jzadirune. However, they finally captured a skulk, 5 sessions in to Life's Bazaar. They plan to interrogate him next session, which will lead to the Malachite Hold, so I imagine I will have some more deaths to report soon.
I was very clear when the campaign started that this is a difficult campaign and will require teamwork and solid play to survive. Deaths are expected. I think that, as long as all the players go in with that understanding, things should work out fine. If the players and DM want a different style of game, then the DM is going to need to make significant modifications. It then becomes a time vs. benefit analysis to decide whether you want to continue with the campaign, or look to another adventure that better supports your desired playstyle.
My party has just finished Flood Season, and so far there has been only one character death. The character was a human Rogue 3/Fighter 2. I don't remember if I changed the spell choices, but what killed him was that the halfling diviner Skaven Umbermead cast enervation in the surprise round on him, and then hit him with a lightning bolt in round 1 while he was still flat-footed. If not for the negative levels, the lightning damage would not have killed him.
Some battles have been touch-and-go. The grell in Jzadirune very nearly took out our wizard; two different characters reached negative hit points fighting Tongueater at the Lucky Monkey; and the T-Rex skeleton in the kopru ruins sunk its teeth very deeply into almost every member of the party and killed an NPC hireling they had with them.
On the other hand, some battles have gone shockingly (to me) easily. They killed Kazmojen in 3 rounds; Triel Eldurast failed some key saves and died very quickly; and the large demon in the lake inexplicably lost mutiple opposed grapple checks against the party's dwarf fighter.
This campaign has been a blast for me to run, and my Players definitely seem to be enjoying it. Next up: Umber Hulk Smash!
A few posts back a couple of you mentioned how you had gone 3, even 4 sessions without combat.
<snicker snicker>
We had 10 three-hour-long sessions over the course of Flood Festival, culminating in a fantastic 3 sessions based on Delvesdeep's material for the Demonskar ball. I decided to run the Festival slightly before the actual flooding occurred, and also before the search for the wands began, just because it fit better in our camp.
I don't think the players were bored for even a micro second during that stretch...at least I hope not :) Really the only time I've ever feel the players are yawning a bit too much is when we get too bogged down in combat, and rules-look-ups.
On the other hand, some battles have gone shockingly (to me) easily. They killed Kazmojen in 3 rounds...
Tell me about it. My group has two wizards, and Kazmojen was Glitterdusted, Greased and surrounded by an illusory prismatic cylinder. The party even took out the durzagar before he could quaff his Potion of Invisibility. Only Prickles was a threat, nearly killing the party rogue with a bite and three quills.