Creative Director
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Perhaps i am missing it.
But in the old AP there were recommendations which Level the party
should have.
I am preparing CoCT AP but i dont see something like it in the
Magazin.
Did i miss it or is something like it missing?
I would be interested to know which level the party should have
at the end of Edge of Anarchy.Any Advice welcome.
Thanks
Khelvan
The starting level is generally printed on the back cover. We also mention it in the credits page down at the bottom in the small print; that can probably work better in bigger text elsewhere...
This is a good point. There is an infrequent mention of how the characters might not be high enough level to kill someone outright, but there's no "The characters should be X level at this point." like there was in the Cauldron adventure.
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Since I'm so stingy as a DM that I give my players zero experience points, I also need to know at what points in the adventure to level the characters.
In this first adventure, I leveled them after the second part.
I plan on leveling them to 3rd after the fourth part and then after the seventh part to 4th.
Does that sound about right for six characters? Or do I need to figure it out by the ELs?
I was hoping to avoid that.
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Since I'm so stingy as a DM that I give my players zero experience points, I also need to know at what points in the adventure to level the characters.
In this first adventure, I leveled them after the second part.
I plan on leveling them to 3rd after the fourth part and then after the seventh part to 4th.Does that sound about right for six characters? Or do I need to figure it out by the ELs?
I was hoping to avoid that.
I'm home sick, so I'll try to figure out a 'if they did every encounter' level up times in about 2 hours
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Creative Director
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Pathfinder assumes that most GMs hand out XP at the end of every session. The adventures themselves are absolutely built with the assumption that characters will be gaining one or two levels during the adventure. The ELs listed for encounters should be an indication of the increasing danger of an adventure, but it seems that might be too subtle a guide.
That said, I'm very strongly considering adding in some sort of sidebar or something to the adventures that explains what points PCs should be leveling up and all that. If we DO do this, though, it won't be till Second Darkness starts up in Pathfinder #13.
That would be really handy, just to save DMs the trouble of doing a lot of calculating based on their individual party. One of the things I did recognize as particularly handy in the adventure run in Cauldron was that each chapter started with a statement about what level the party should be.
I know I plan to incorporate more encounters/events than are in the AP in my game (mostly because I have 7 players), and it is a lot easier just to tell everyone to level up for the next session than it is to calculate exactly what the EXP award is for each encounter as it goes.
I recognize you cannot write in flexibility in the EXP awards, but just including an idea of where the characters should have progressed in level at the start of each chapter would be helpful (granted I'll still have to adjust for the large party size).
Recognize I understand there's no pleasing everyone :) heh.
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I haven't started running yet (I want to but a couple of my players won't have time until summer, which is driving me mad), but I've done quite a bit of random prep. I don't have my notes with me, but from what I remember I'm anticipating that my party will level to 2 in a street encounter straight after the Fishery, 3 after the shingles chase and 4 at some point in the last area (probably the Carrion Golem but the wide range of XP totals from different approaches to All the World's Meat and Eels End makes it a touch hard to guess). This is with 4 players, taking into account a handful of street encounters and pieces of story xp that I think they're likely to pick up, and discounting any rooms that I think they're likely to miss/avoid, so hopefully I'm in the ballpark for what's intended in the adventure level-wise. If they do *everything* in the book they'll hit level 5 in the last area, but I don't think that's intended since that includes a full-frontal assault on Eel's End.
I've read through PF8 and it seems like it should level them to 7 easily enough, but I haven't had time to sit down and start making notes yet.
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Pathfinder assumes that most GMs hand out XP at the end of every session. The adventures themselves are absolutely built with the assumption that characters will be gaining one or two levels during the adventure. The ELs listed for encounters should be an indication of the increasing danger of an adventure, but it seems that might be too subtle a guide.
That said, I'm very strongly considering adding in some sort of sidebar or something to the adventures that explains what points PCs should be leveling up and all that. If we DO do this, though, it won't be till Second Darkness starts up in Pathfinder #13.
Assuming the fine writers and editors do their homework and build the adventure such that the XP gains are appropriate, there is no reason why a DM really needs to keep track of XP. If the adventure-as-written allows for a level up at the beginning of a Chapter of any given adventure, then a simple line at the chapter header that reads "Chapter Title - level 5-6)
is enough for me to either steer the characters away from a chapter if they aren't ready or to "level them up" before starting it.I always assume the published adventures have been mostly vetted for xp gains, and simply level the characters at the appropriate points. I used to keep track, but when I realized that the adventure has essentially done this already with the progression of encounter difficulty, I've done away with it.
And, as for building my own adventures...I do the work determining ELs and such, so I already know approximately where a level up occurs. So its become a moot point.
The added benefit is if the player actions result in a side trek, I can give the players free reign and not worry about "excessive" xp, nor do I need to worry about forcing side treks for "deficient" xp.
In my own adventures its not an issue. In published adventures there is a fair amount of trust, but Paizo has earned that in spades.