¿Has anyone made a high-level playtest?
Well, I don;t know if you'd call it a playtest, as much as a rules change, but the current campaign I'm in switched from 3.5 to PF back round lvl 16. GM fully intends on taking us beyond 20, which has happened, and we are now using PF with the Epic Rules Handbook. So far, has proven interesting.
My group ran two level 20 encounters... 4 v. a Colossal Red and 4 v. a Tarask (sp?). Both at Alpha 2 stage.
The Barbarian rage points seemed too few for the one encounter with the Red Dragon while also serving to be way too many points to easily keep track of. (The Barbarian player had a calculator to keep track of them, and even then needed others to remember a few numbers for the calculations). That being said, the Barbarians rage abilities seemed quite useful. Although, the Barbarian was the first (and only character) to go down.
The Wizard's bonded item worked great for my wizard... casting Mage's Disjunction twice (having prepared it only once) worked fairly well to take down the Dragon's buffs (it would have worked better had the DM not ruled Mage's disjunction to be no more powerful than a normal dispel magic).
The Cleric... don't remember what the cleric did.
I also played the Rogue... and the new version of mobility was a lifesaver. Also, using the Rogue's ability to deny a dragon attacks of opportunity helped the Barbarian charge in a couple times. The DM had the Dragon shape-shifting a lot which cured the bleed damage and ability damage from sneak attacks.
As it was, the Dragon was defeated by a spell reflection effect on the Cleric's shield... the Dragon failed its save and was reduced to an Int, Wis and Cha. of 1. At that point, the DM threw in the towel.
The Tarrask encounter I ran the cleric and wizard, another player did a fighter type and rogue. I've never run a cleric before, so this cleric didn't do anything other than wait for people to need heals. As it turned out, that wasn't necessary.
The Fighter and Rogue did a fairly good job of running up and beating on the Tarrask, but they didn't appear to effect it much. The Rogue's bleed was nullified by the Tarrask's fast healing.
I had prepared Horid Wilting once that day... and since it was one of the few magic effects that Tarrasks aren't immune to, I cast it.. using the Universalist's free metamagic points, I maximized/empowered it. Did the same thing next round with the bonded weapon... and again with my Pearl of Power 8. 3 castings of a spell I prepared once. Not bad.
Then I stumbled across a better idea... I put myself right next to it (flying w/ mobility for no attacks of opportunity), and cast prysmatic sphere. It attacked me (er, the sphere), and became insane... next round I stepped out from behind the sphere, cast an another random spell that may have done a d6 damage, and then I used the rod of quicken spell to cast time stop to move back into the sphere (we were doing core only, so no mobile combat casting feat). The Tarrask attacked me, as Insane creatures must, and failed the save to avoid being sent to another plane.
No deaths in the fight, and the wizard/cleric team came out mostly unscathed. The Rogue and fighter type got hit a couple times, but not badly.
For equipment, the Wizard made most of his own stuff... which was nice to have a bit extra to put into the bonded item (staff of power, plus defending).
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I find it interesting that the benchmark is always "wail on a big monster until it dies and record the effects". If you use that as the litmus test for everything, of course the casters will come out on top. But even the, rogues and fighters are better in other situations, particularly in tight quarters or where collateral damage is a big no-no, or where this is the fifteenth fight since you last rested.
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It also makes a major difference where characters aren't walking bins and libraries of powerful magic. Things especially change when you have a low magic campaign and magic items are rare to nonexistent, and spell acquisition is more carefully controlled.
It does make a difference. It means that you're not playing the game as the rules are written, which is perfectly fine and wonderful for what happens around your table, but massively unhelpful when trying to do a playtest.
Well a Dragon and a Tarrasque (of all things) isn't going to give the full round of playtest info. Bring in the Outsiders, the multi-creature encounters, the high CR creatures with Spell Resistance, etc.
A solo encounter taken out of context of any pre- or post- rammifications and considerations will only give you so much info. In a vacuum, against a solo target that you know the abilities of, a Wizard kicks ass still. Good for him.
When facing an assortment of creatures (especially at once), and especially those that have spell resistance (many at high levels have this), the non-casters start to show their purpose.
If they don't outright kill at least part of the encounter, they tie up and whittle them down.
It's like saying "The cleric felt like a heal-bot" in the above example, despite the poster saying he didn't know much about the cleric. If they were facing undead, or if the cleric was played by an individual, we'd hear more about his side of the playtesting.
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As it is, we know a bit more about the Barbarian points. Good abilities, somewhat hard mechanic to track. This was my fear, but I'm not sure what would make a better mechanic.
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Wow. Same old, same old.
I was hoping 4e would do something about non-casters being useless. Not too keen on 4e now that I've seen it though.
Looking at Pathfinder, they have a lot of good ideas, but they aren't fixing the basic problem. The nature of magic just plain makes it better, particularly when you allow quickened spell and the like.
Giving a rogue a couple low level spells or giving a fighter +4 to hit and +4 to AC just doesn't make much of a difference.
I played 1e, then took a long break till 3e came out. Maybe 2e was the best version, and I didn't see it.
Like I said, a lot of good ideas, but for just one example the fighter is still as gear dependent as ever. I haven't run one, but I bet a 20th level warrior with 20th level gear would stomp a 20th level fighter without magic gear. Heck give him 10 more feats and the warrior would still win.
I'm sure someone will chime in about encounters per day, anti-magic fields, and golems and whatnot, but I'm done with that. We've seen all the arguments, and seen what you can do in play. That matter has been settled.
Kind of disappointing, particularly as 4e is so... 4e.
Sunbeam, I think this was a Pathfinder high level play test, not a 4E like you are thinking.
Kohl
I'm sorry if I suggested in my post above that we fully and completely tested high level play, or that I took careful notes of what all the other player was doing with their characters.
On a whim, two guys I play with decided to run a group of 4 v. one baddie... just to see how that would go. And that's what I reported on.
The tarrasq was supposed to be one of several monsters attacking a city, but the DM was advised on various boards that the tarrasq was too difficult by himself to add anything to. Hindsight being what it is, that was bad advice (at least as this DM ran it).
I agree that neither of the encounters I described are the perfect litmus test for how these characters perform at higher levels... but it's what I had to report. Has anyone else run a level 20 encounter or series of encounters to test Pathfinder classes at higher levels?
Oh... the magic, my understanding is that the limits on magic items is based upon slots and cost - with no item being more than 200,000 gold. Pathfinder has rules to combine ability bonuses and other magical bonuses on a single item. So, we used that (or at least I did with the Wizard and Rogue). Pathfinder also has more slots for magic items, although I didn't find that I needed any.
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Show me where the rules specifically mandate how much magic a character has and compare your examples with the pregenerated characters you see at modules or in the sample rulebooks. Most of the time PC's carry far more than what is the suggested amount of magic. Particurlarly in the playtests that I've seen in these boards tend to suggest the characters used are carrying a ton of magic.
The "rules" in question are the wealth-by-level tables, which do, in fact, specifically mandate an amount gold pieces' worth of equipment - almost all of which, by necessity, is magical after about 3rd or 4th level. Moreover, both the sorcerer and the wizard classes specify that they may choose any spell available to them from the sorcerer/wizard list, and the cleric and druid lists are, of course, fully accessible at all times.
You specifically said "a low magic campaign" where "magic items are rare to nonexistent, and spell acquisition is more carefully controlled." A 20th level wizard will have (41 + Int bonus) non-cantrip spells in their spellbook at least; a 20th level Pathfinder sorcerer has 32 known non-cantrip spells, not counting bloodline spells. If you have not allowed the players to choose these spells freely - that is, without "careful control" - you are playing under house rules. A 20th level character is also supposed to have 880,000 gp worth of equipment and money, according to the Alpha 3 document - if your players can manage to spend all that cash while "magic items are rare to nonexistent," good for them, but I somehow doubt it will be possible for most of us.
I remember reading pregens for modules like Tome of Horrors, or the Bloodstone series and I kept trying to ask myself the last time I saw a playgroup of characters of similar level that had that little amount of magic. So I'd be a bit careful about laying that "not playing the game as the rules are written" charge.
I'm not defending or attacking any specific set of character builds, but I must point out that the Bloodstone series were AD&D modules, and thus aren't at all applicable to the playtest of Pathfinder, and Tome of Horrors is actually an NPC book - a monster manual, in effect - and so the "pregens" would be built with NPC wealth. (On the other hand, if you meant Tomb of Horrors, it too is AD&D and is also not germane here.)
It's also worth noting that pregens aren't really valid sources of argument anyway, since they can and often do violate the rules in their construction, from reasons as varied as writers who don't know the rules as well as they should to an attempt to better suit the PCs to the module in question to simple typographical errors. Even Paizo is not immune to this - the pregen version of Kyra in Pathfinder #5 (Cleric 12, BAB +9, Dex -1) has a listed ranged touch attack of +4. So you can't just point to a pregen and say, "this proves you're wrong!"
Just to be clear, I'm not trying to start a flame war, or give you grief over whatever kind of campaign you want to run. I meant it when I said that your house rules are good for your table - almost everybody has house rules, and I'm a big fan of the idea. But it's not a valid playtest to use them, because we're here to look at what's right and what's wrong with the rules as written. If you want to suggest that Pathfinder adopt your house rule, that's perfectly fine too (though here at least backwards compatibility is going to pretty guarantee it won't happen). But we can't just say, "well it works fine if you change the rules like this" unless we're actually suggesting changing the rules like that.