These particular additions to 3rd edition I would concur as being the most singularly broken facet of the later 3E game materials. I came to absolutely HATE immediate and swift actions, especially as Sir Jacobs points out, immediate actions. These concepts need to be removed from the game completely in my opinion - and IIRC since they are not Open Game content, well, that should solve that particular problem.
One thing that's REALLY slowed the game down (and this is at ALL levels), though, were the sudden bloom of swift and immediate actions we saw near the end of the 3.5 cycle.
Swift and immediate actions are in fact OGL. I wouldn't want to see them eliminated but I would like to see less of them. On the other hand, in my campaign a swift action ethereal ghost step saved our ninja's ass big time.
Well.. I really, really am having a hard time picking one thing, but if I had to, I guess I would say the biggest mechanical problem with high level play is the rate at which offensive abilities grow in comparison to defensive. Attack bonuses vs. AC, damage vs. hp, and worst of all Spell DCs vs. Saving throws. This isn't just limited to Combat either. Skills vs. Check DCs for instance.
The constant creep upwards in offensive ability, and the addition of more and more "save or die"/"save or be disabled" spells and abilities make more and more of the game a matter of either certain victory or utter defeat, with next to no middle ground in which it's possible for a conflict (combat or otherwise) to actually be exciting.
The other facet of high-level play that needs to be addressed is GEAR. With the addition of so much 'built in' goodies at the highest levels of play, shouldn't this warrant reducing the 'mandatory swag at level X' syndrome that has plagued 3e since inception ? My solution to this is very simply to never again permit 'buy yer custom leet-speak-whatever nonsense items' that has been a signature of the 3e game play I've seen continually escalate since 3e's release. Too bad I hadn't thought of this some years ago...
Buy? No. Commission? Yes. Basically, magic items that are not on the Minor lists (market price less than 7,500 gp; 5,000 gp in a "low magic" campaign and 10,000 gp in a "high magic" campaign) should not commonly be "for sale," IMO.
If a character wants a specific item (or a specific enchantment added to an item they already have), then they will need to track down a spellcaster willing and able to create/enhance it, convince said spellcaster, provide any special materials required (side-quest alert!), pay the spellcaster for their time and effort, and wait while the enchantment occurs. The only other options should be:
1) Research the location of an already existing item, retrieving it from a dragon's lair, forgotten tomb, deadly dungeon, etc. or convincing its current owner to part with it (which could be tricky, depending on the owner; convincing a noble to part with an heirloom, a church to allow the use of a "holy" item, etc.).
2) Enchant the item themselves (or have a party member do so).
This also gives the DM more opportunities to roleplay NPCs, use non-combat encounters, etc. It shouldn't be a matter of plunking 120,630 gp on the counter of "Ye Olde Majick Shoppe" for a holy avenger.
The Character Wealth by Level table has always been a guideline to judge the total wealth of a character. It's the DM's job to periodically review the PCs to make sure they are not too far above or below the baseline for their campaign.
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I'd have to say management at higher levels is the biggest problem for our group. With the number of feats the fighter gets, the spells the spellcasters get, the abilities that prestige classes offer, and the piles of magic items they aquire, it's difficult to keep track of it all. That's not even getting into epic levels.. By the time we hit epic, things seem so unbalanced..
Any word if the next iteration of PF is going to include or even hint at an 'epic fix'?
@Dragonchess Player: I love your idea, I hope you don't mind if I take those ideas for my next campaign. :)
Swift and immediate actions are in fact OGL. I wouldn't want to see them eliminated but I would like to see less of them. On the other hand, in my campaign a swift action ethereal ghost step saved our ninja's ass big time.
I would hate for too many of them to go as well, but I wouldn't mind confining swift spells a bit more to melee-casters like the duskblade, ranger, and paladin. I think they work very well for those character types. A paladin/bard in my Shackled City campaign is having great fun with swift fly and charging smite (from PH2).
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Hey, this is about what I was going to write, more or less. The paradigm shift, and the fact that players and DMs don't shift, or don't want to shift lies at the heart of the problem. At high levels players should be taking on armies, defending cities, masterminding or eliminating major plots,...Can you outline a scenario for one of those, say taking on the army?
I can think of a number of ways for a high-level party to take on an army. Doing in it combat--my player did this in _City of the Spider Queen_--is mind-destroyingly boring. I never want to see that again.
You can assassinate the leaders. This tends to be trivially easy for a high-level party unless the leaders are themselves high-level, in which case it's a high-level combat scenario with the problems we've been discussing. You can also Dominate them: same comment.
You can talk the army into going away. Too bad the Diplomacy rules are broken. In any case it's hard to make this more than a 15-20 minute scenario, after which the GM has to think of something else.
You can create natural disasters to wipe out the army. The non-casters are likely to feel bored by this approach, and there's not much challenge in it. 15 minutes again.
You can turn the whole army into replicating undead, if you have a good way to nuke the undead afterwards: my player is partial to shadows followed by Sunburst. Not much challenge in this either.
Where is the interesting, meaty stuff? This is not a rhetorical question: I'd really like to know. I could make this interesting for 8ths but I have no clue how it could ever be interesting for 16ths.
Mary
Another way that I've recently seen explained in the Shackled City Message forum and recently used it to great fun and success in my Shackled City game was suggested by a member on Paizo board named "Delvesdeep"
He developed scenarios of preparation for combat and awarded Victory Points (VPs) specific to the scenario in the SCAP.
The more and better preperations the PCs do, the more VPs they earned. The more VPs they earned, the more chance of success. The PCs acted like generals etc having full control and power of delegation over certain important NPCs with speicific skill-sets/knowledge sets, and several small groups of skilled laboreres and men-at-arms. Each one set about doing taskes that take a certain amount of time - all the while the Players are micro-managing it all on a finite timeline.
Then a quick chart to determine level of success, and the DM then narrates the battle/war as it plays out using the level of success the PCs were able to influence.
During prep - there may be a few espionage elements, diplomatic alliances, and even enemy of my enemy encounters that the PCs can partake in.
During the battle, the DM has one particular battle with the BBEG or whatever plannned to happend for the PCs direct involvment to unfold, while the rest of the battle rages on (off camera) to the level of success comensurate with the VP total.
Then a final analysis and summation for the battle when all is said and done.
It was a lot of fun, and the players really had a blast having so much delegation power and being able to really use a lot of their knowledge of tactics and such to micro-manage the best plausible way each NPC and group could help with the prep.
EDIT: I would like to add that the PCs were all level 12 and such a battle of that proportion would have been hell to run; but it was fun as it was and they did have a couple of important encounters along the way in preparation - so there was plenty of action to go along with it. So point being at pretty high level, this type of scenario worked well and wasn't the standard run of the mill make all BBEG bigger and more powerful enough to challenge - the encounter as a whole was interesting enough and challenging enough for their level of play without being more dungeon stomping...
Robert
While reading through this thread I think I came upon almost a root cause of many of these high-level problems, magic. Now, this came to me because I'm currently running a 3.5 campaign in which essentially the players weren't allowed to play any spell-casting classes. As I was looking at some of the various problems and trying to figure out how I could avoid them in my own game, it occurred to me that the players not having access to magic of their own fairly neatly avoided almost all of the problems I've seen discussed. Want to know if someone's lying to you, better start doing some investigating, cause you can't just cast your super magic on them.
Now I'm not saying that this is the best way to do things, but perhaps if magic weren't quite so omnipotent at these higher levels it would be easier for the DM to create non-combat oriented challenges. Anybody think there's any way of doing this?
A low-magic campaign is always an option for a group that doesn't want to deal with high-level spells. However, unless using a pre-made rules/setting product (such as Iron Heroes), this requires almost as much preparation or modification by the DM as normal high-level play.
We've thought seriously about requiring all casters to take alternate levels in a Core class other than their main one. This cuts the caster's spell level advancement in half, while not cutting their hp, saves, character level, etc. It's drastic but it does seem as though it would spread out the 'sweet spot' considerably. You would want to discourage hyper-optimized fighters, but without casters to keep up with, the impetus to make such characters should be reduced.
This is not tested yet, because in my opinion it is drastic enough to make the published modules unusable without major surgery, and our GMs have not had the prep time. That's the real problem here, in my opinion. There are all kind of fixes for high level play in a totally homebrew campaign--the easiest is just not allowing PCs to become high level--but what does one do if one wants to run SCAP or CotCT? My GM tried to cut down SCAP so that it could end at 15th level instead of 21st, and (a) it was a ton of work, and (b) he misjudged, leading to TPK and campaign death. It's not an easy thing to do, and one would like to avoid it if possible.
Mary
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I'm DMing 14th level in Eberron right now. I encountered a lot of problems at first (not just one, or even one main one), as folks have mentioned, and have located some work arounds.-- The druid PC converted to a binder. Thank gods.
Indeed; "Hmmm, who do we know who publishes a binder magic system?"
LOL
Ker-Ching!
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The biggest problem I have run into is that the higher levels they reach, the more likely that my players treat everything as a combat encounter rather than trying to use diplomacy or intelligence to deal with problems. Also the higher level we reach the more my players decide that the cool character concept that they had back at 3rd level (the default level for my campaigns) are no longer are fun at 12th level and they want to abandon their character and play a new cooler character. These are player issues, not rule issues, but they seem to be common among many groups that I have talked with.
Also the higher level we reach the more my players decide that the cool character concept that they had back at 3rd level (the default level for my campaigns) no longer are fun at 12the level and they want to abandon their character and play a new cooler character. These are player issues, not rule issues, but they seem to be common among many groups that I have talked with.
I don't know if this is a player issue. I think 'gamers' can get bored with a character after awhile. I think that is one of the challenges of a 'long' adventure path. It is also why gamers jump around rpg systems. Stated differently, it is not necessarily wrong to have some adventures end around 15th level so people can reboot.
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Stated differently, it is not necessarily wrong to have some adventures end around 15th level so people can reboot.
I agree with that, the problem arises when they do not want to end the adventure, they just want to add new characters. This becomes a problem because I have built the adventure specifically around their existing characters. In one instance the character to be replaced was a key figure in the adventure path. That is when it becomes an issue.
Last Friday my group just surpassed our "sweet spot". It was our PCs vs. 6 huge giants. THe fighter was so souped up that he had 5 attacks, and took about 4 minutes to resolve his round. On the other hand, during an extensive dungeon he gets 1 attack in a round, since all our casters usually kill the enemies within 2. Fights are either ultra-short, brutal and one-sided (PCs for the win) Or they are very very long but still one stided (PCs for the win).
Echoing what people said, but hey, it was asked:
- Rounds take too long to resolve.
- Too many boosts and mini-systems for the melee fighters to work out (this spell boosts your strength, you have a +1 flaming holy greataxe, and you have Enlarge Person so that's a +4, and you have a girldle +6, and you are in rage, and you are wielding a 2-handed weapon, sooo.. Let's figure out what your new strangth bonus will be and then add 50% more)
- Too many magical items, and 90% of them are sold for gold because other, often 'required' items are taking up the same slot.
- Too many skill rolls. THe new PF skill system fixes this, but we are still using 3.5 since the GM figures if we reduce teh skills, any skill points in those skills that are removed should be lost. So the rogue does a Hide + Move SIlently in almost every hallway, then Search + Disable Device in almost every room. For the record, in the entire run of the published campaign, there has been 3 traps.
- High level spells are complex and hard to look up. Another thread pointed out a spell that references another spell, that references yet another spell. The GM is often sitting there having to look up spell after spell.
- Dispel Magic = 10 minutes of figuring out the correct numbers. Mostly for the equipment weapon-reliant PCs. Each time we run into a behold it becomes "My spell save DC is 21.. no, wait.. 19.. Oh no.. 18. I think.. Hold on."
Unrelated comment
- Anyone with a true Neutral alignment has far more versatility when it comes to equipment (can use holy AND unholy AND axiomatic AND chaotic), and is much more safe when it comes to alignment-based spells than anyone else. If protection from good/evil/law/chaos remains, there needs to be protection from apathy so the true Neutrals need to start worring about those effects.
Re: Character Change
I faced this problem too. I find that multiclassing and prestige classes allow for a great shift in a character, which usually revitalises a person's interest in a character while the character remains relatively the same. Single-class characters (Wizard level 1 to 15, for instance) are often the ones that are ditched over time.
Of course, the character could go through some IC life-changing event to allow a change and maintain interest, but that's up to the GM and not the system.
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- Anyone with a true Neutral alignment has far more versatility when it comes to equipment (can use holy AND unholy AND axiomatic AND chaotic), and is much more safe when it comes to alignment-based spells than anyone else. If protection from good/evil/law/chaos remains, there needs to be protection from apathy so the true Neutrals need to start worring about those effects.
What you could do is decide that anyone using an aligned spell or weapon takes on that alignment (if not already a match).
No more wielding holy and unholy weapons at the same time (sheesh).
No more benefitting from Prot from Evil, while claiming the enemy's Prot from Good doesn't apply to you.
Swift and immediate actions are in fact OGL. I wouldn't want to see them eliminated but I would like to see less of them. On the other hand, in my campaign a swift action ethereal ghost step saved our ninja's ass big time.These particular additions to 3rd edition I would concur as being the most singularly broken facet of the later 3E game materials. I came to absolutely HATE immediate and swift actions, especially as Sir Jacobs points out, immediate actions. These concepts need to be removed from the game completely in my opinion - and IIRC since they are not Open Game content, well, that should solve that particular problem.
One thing that's REALLY slowed the game down (and this is at ALL levels), though, were the sudden bloom of swift and immediate actions we saw near the end of the 3.5 cycle.
Hrm ... hadn't realized swift / immediate was classified as OGL ... blecch. I don't mind a class that gets then so much as I mind very inexpensive gear that gets them. The ninja's swift ethereal ghost step is a pretty high-level ability, and not one I personally have a problem with - but having a melee character boingy up to the baddy, unload a full-round attack and then *pouf* back all in one round just ... seems wrong, to me at least.
The other facet of high-level play that needs to be addressed is GEAR. With the addition of so much 'built in' goodies at the highest levels of play, shouldn't this warrant reducing the 'mandatory swag at level X' syndrome that has plagued 3e since inception ? My solution to this is very simply to never again permit 'buy yer custom leet-speak-whatever nonsense items' that has been a signature of the 3e game play I've seen continually escalate since 3e's release. Too bad I hadn't thought of this some years ago...Buy? No. Commission? Yes. Basically, magic items that are not on the Minor lists (market price less than 7,500 gp; 5,000 gp in a "low magic" campaign and 10,000 gp in a "high magic" campaign) should not commonly be "for sale," IMO.
If a character wants a specific item (or a specific enchantment added to an item they already have), then they will need to track down a spellcaster willing and able to create/enhance it, convince said spellcaster, provide any special materials required (side-quest alert!), pay the spellcaster for their time and effort, and wait while the enchantment occurs. The only other options should be:
1) Research the location of an already existing item, retrieving it from a dragon's lair, forgotten tomb, deadly dungeon, etc. or convincing its current owner to part with it (which could be tricky, depending on the owner; convincing a noble to part with an heirloom, a church to allow the use of a "holy" item, etc.).
2) Enchant the item themselves (or have a party member do so).
This also gives the DM more opportunities to roleplay NPCs, use non-combat encounters, etc. It shouldn't be a matter of plunking 120,630 gp on the counter of "Ye Olde Majick Shoppe" for a holy avenger.
The Character Wealth by Level table has always been a guideline to judge the total wealth of a character. It's the DM's job to periodically review the PCs to make sure they are not too far above or below the baseline for their...
Agreed - and that is ultimately my point. "Ye Olde Magic Shoppe", at least for more than a few that play in my area, is a real problem. I'll be the first to admit that I as the GM have been to blame in certain instances for the problem from the get go, then having to wallow in the pain of dealing with the consequences of that lapse of judgement.
Commissioned items are far better, as it would require locating then interacting with said item crafter, permitting far more tailored dictation of what NPC's can do based on a GM's write-up of said NPC.
And of course the time-honored methods you outline are pretty critical to retain. My failure to do so in my own, concluded campaign led to some pretty ridiculous PCs. *Sighs*
All in all, points well taken good sir, many thanks. :)
I think I'll drag a stopwatch out for my next game and see how long each round takes.
The staggering number of options to the players makes turns take a while, but also as DM some of the monsters I am running have stat blocks three pages long. Too many options on the other side of the screen as well.
A dispel can take 45 minutes to resolve all the group buff changes that might occur. Stacking of spell effects takes time to figure out if something fits or not. Perhaps something gets dispelled that was overwriting another spell effect... so the bonus isn't gone, but it's lower... long long long time to figure it out.
God forbid a player isn't present and someone else has to play his character.
The only way I can see high level 3.5 playing faster is if everyone at the table is using an excel spreadsheet fired up with some sort of software to track all the spell effects, buffs, etc that the players have on them.
I honestly can't wait to finish with Age of Worms so that I can play something else... either 3.5/PFRPG as a player, or 4E as a DM or a player.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 4
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To me, the biggest problem with high level play has been that the group is not necessary anymore. The game becomes a bunch of individuals and group dynamic is lost. Leadership especially makes this problem worse. I realize that this is a player issue more than a mechanic issue but the feeling of comraderie and teamwork that is necessary at low levels and fun in the mid levels is lost at high levels.
Can you give some more detail about this particular item? I'm interested in how this became an issue for you. I run a high-level game in which it's 100% NOT a problem... the party has developed over the campaign's 7 years into a really solid working group. Individually they have distinct and necessary parts to play, but it's when they work together that things really get done.
However, I PLAY in a high level (sorta-epic) game which is exactly as you describe. People can't work together to save their lives, everybody has layers of pseudo-plotlines that constantly work against the group as a whole. The characters are their own worst enemies.
I think that the cohesiveness (or lack of) in high level play is mostly a function of what the players want out of the game. If they're invested in playing at that level, it'll work. If they not, it's going to be as you describe.
Hm. I never really found this sort of thing to be much of a problem: high-level combats tend to be rare, and usually involve the group in lengthy planning and investigation sessions first. Most of the time the various spellcasters are loaded up on spells designed for social and utility functions, and only have a few combat options prepared. High-level problems tend to be much more complicated that low-level ones.
Besides, there's only so much that your vast combat powers can help you out when the problem is your magically-gifted six-year-old, who's been exposed to your social skills since he or she was born - and thus is pretty near immune.
For the more specific problems with high-level NPC spellcasters - well, they normally have decades or centuries of experience (that I don't have), often have superhuman intelligence (that I don't have either), have lots of time to make selections (that I also don't have, since I have an entire world to run - while the players only have to run their own characters and holdings), have access to precognitive or divinatory information sources (which I’m pretty sure I don’t), or even have Gods inspiring their spell choices (I’m pretty sure I don’t have that either). Ergo: take off one spell slot (presumed full of something that will in no way be relevant), assign common-use spells to one or two of the others, and leave one or two open for use as needed. The character is presumed to have followed the normal rules for preparing spells; I’m simply simulating the advantages that they have over me in selecting those spells After all, I don’t have to be able to cast spells to describe a character who can.
Do the players want to be able to do that? Well, they have lots of time to consider and tweak their characters, they’re only running the one character, and they get to gather information on NPC plans while their own are private creations in their own heads - giving them a fistful of automatic advantages. Since they can’t give up those advantages, if they want floating spell slots they’ll have to give up something else - such as Feats. I they want floating spell slots, they’re up for sale at one Feat each.
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Unrelated comment
- Anyone with a true Neutral alignment has far more versatility when it comes to equipment (can use holy AND unholy AND axiomatic AND chaotic), and is much more safe when it comes to alignment-based spells than anyone else. If protection from good/evil/law/chaos remains, there needs to be protection from apathy so the true Neutrals need to start worring about those effects.
I changed my game long ago: those of "neutral" alignment are affected by "both" smite evil and smite good. Or spells that affect good or evil.
I did this after I saw so many games and players opt for "neutral" characters just to avoid the "Smite Goods" and evil spells.
My campaign world is heavily infested with demonic and devil-cults, and is a battle ground for souls between the fiends and celestials. So it makes sense that people in the world need to "choose a side" before armageddon. Those who have not chosen a side ("neutral") are not protected by either and thus are affected by Unholy blight AND Holy Smite.
One can use any rationalization that works for him and his campaign - this was mine, and the ruling works just fine - and we have more goodly characters now, which is my preference.
regardless, it seems just making that rule eliminates your problem and the imbalance IMO.
Robert