It'd be interesting to see how it would have worked out without the Ring Gate.
He was never, or almost never hit. It wouldn't have made any difference. The Ring Gate is just to rub it in. If he had gone himself it would have went just as well.
Crusader of Logic wrote: He was never, or almost never hit. It wouldn't have made any difference. The Ring Gate is just to rub it in. If he had gone himself it would have went just as well. Of course. If he had walked in naked with no spells prepared it would have gone the same way too with that DM running the show. The player would have simply needed to mumble some abstraction about the wording of how HP works and been invincible.
What are you talking about?
Alphonse Joly wrote: Crusader of Logic wrote: He was never, or almost never hit. It wouldn't have made any difference. The Ring Gate is just to rub it in. If he had gone himself it would have went just as well. Of course. If he had walked in naked with no spells prepared it would have gone the same way too with that DM running the show. The player would have simply needed to mumble some abstraction about the wording of how HP works and been invincible. I have to agree with CoL here. What are you talking about? If you have a rules complaint about the way things were handled, articulate it. If you don't, why bother posting in the first place?
On another note, there will be more playtesting with this character, but both myself and the DM haven't had the freetime we've wanted to sit down and run another one yet.
Squirrelloid wrote: On another note, there will be more playtesting with this character, but both myself and the DM haven't had the freetime we've wanted to sit down and run another one yet. Lst week, I'd suggested "Maybe Iron Crypt of the Heretics or Crypt of the Devil Lich, a notorious PC killer."
Well, I put my money where my mouth is, and bought the PDF's of those modules. If you wanted to test a 15th-Level Wizard and entourage against either of those adventures, and if we figure out some medium for a Pay-by-chat or something, I'd be happy to slog through all the rules interactions and changes for something like that with you.
I agree with your characterization of our styles, by the way. We look at D&D differently, and probably get different rewards out of play. But we both want Pathfinder to be a solid game system, and I'm certainly willing to help you achieve playtesting goals to the level of rigor you think is important.
Squirrelloid wrote: If you have a rules complaint about the way things were handled, articulate it. Oh, I think that the other posters who articulated their complaints about permissive DMing and overly convenient happenstance in your favor covered it fairly well.
I was simply talking about (since you asked) the fact that you appear to have taken a pdf and spent half an hour writing down "the best" solution to each problem and then posting it. And despite this, you still felt the need to twist (and break) the rules, not to mention that when questioned about some blatantly abusive practices, the justification was "Well it wouldn't have mattered anyway."
Of course it wouldn't have mattered anyway! You could have built a tree stand and fireballed the village while whistling Dixie and they would have drank an invisibility potion and stood around (as far as I can tell). You've got a person who's supposedly experienced enough to have survived thus far leading a group of baddies who definitely was alerted to "something going on" at the very, very, very least, who then decides "Hmmm.. Bad times abrewin'... Hows about I stand here some more?"
This nonsense has brought me to the conclusion that you could have won any situation you played simply because that's "how you roll." I'm going to take a giant leap here and suggest that a character half your level with 1/4 as much equipment and zero of the abusive "well it doesn't exactly say I can't make a character with a leveled up cohort" and "Well I could have used ring gate correctly, but I didn't because it didn't matter." "methodology" you used could have steamrolled that situation legitimately, dare I suggest avoiding the sitting down with your DM and telling him "this is how things are going to go, you react this way." or whatever you like to call your pregame tete a tete that generates this type of shameful display.
Alphonse Joly wrote: [...]Oh, I think that the other posters who articulated their complaints about permissive DMing and overly convenient happenstance in your favor covered it fairly well. Actually, if you read the first page, there is a reason for baddies acting the way they were acting - they could not communicate. Crusader of Logic and his GM were playing the module as written, and they stated that the adventure was not properly designed to challenge 15 level characters.
Alphonse Joly wrote: I was simply talking about (since you asked) the fact that you appear to have taken a pdf and spent half an hour writing down "the best" solution to each problem and then posting it. And despite this, you still felt the need to twist (and break) the rules, not to mention that when questioned about some blatantly abusive practices, the justification was "Well it wouldn't have mattered anyway." If you be so kind, kindly cite where the rules were broken. Some of the rules interpretations which were called into question, would not have been affected in any way result of the playtest since the baddies failed to make any contact whatsoever with the wizard.
You may also take into account, that people were not created equal, and intelligent players know how to play their characters to the best of their ability - there is no reason to assume that owner of a character is going to perform suboptimally.
Alphonse Joly wrote: Of course it wouldn't have mattered anyway! You could have built a tree stand and fireballed the village while whistling Dixie and they would have drank an invisibility potion and stood around (as far as I can tell). But he did not. So what exactly is your point?
Alphonse Joly wrote: You've got a person who's supposedly experienced enough to have survived thus far leading a group of baddies who definitely was alerted to "something going on" at the very, very, very least, who then decides "Hmmm.. Bad times abrewin'... Hows about I stand here some more?" For this question, kindly ask module author why he wrote it the way. Otherwise, in case you haven't notice, the module (apologies for reiterating the point) was played as written.
Alphonse Joly wrote: This nonsense has brought me to the conclusion that you could have won any situation you played simply because that's "how you roll." I'm going to take a giant leap here and suggest that a character half your level with 1/4 as much equipment and zero of the abusive "well it doesn't exactly say I can't make a character with a leveled up cohort" and "Well I could have used ring gate correctly, but I didn't because it didn't matter." "methodology" you used could have steamrolled that situation legitimately, dare I suggest avoiding the sitting down with your DM and telling him "this is how things are going to go, you react this way." or whatever you like to call your pregame tete a tete that generates this type of shameful display. Dude,
1. You haven't read properly adventure account.
2. You fail to use arguments.
Bad troll, bad. Huge leap, indeed... is it another incarnation of that stalker troll which followed Crusader previously?
Regards,
Ruemere
Hi, Alphonse. It's nice to see someone who cares a lot about playtesting Pathfinder post here.
But I think we have different understandings about how playtesting works.
I've playtested adventures before, and the playtesting group try to break the adventure, with wacked-out strong characters who might be able to overwhelm the adventure, legally-designed "weak" characters who might not have anything to do, unbalanced parties, and so on.
We're playtesting the rules system now, which requires something even less like regular play. Every time Squirrelloid and his DM find a cakewalk, it's a data point. Every time the adventure kills the character dead, that's a data point. Now, unlucky die rolls are supposed to kill you dead, and a string of PC criticals is [/i]supposed[/i] to make the day all sunny, so if something like that happens, they should note it in their playtest log and replay the encounter with another set of die rolls.
So, as much as D&D doesn't have "winners", playtest sessions have even fewer. A "pregame tete-a-tete" to set up ground rules is really important.
And, for what it's worth,
1) The rules are silent about whether he set up the cohort's level and equipment correctly. These are data points.
2) I probably wouldn't allow Line-of-Sight through a ring gate, but the rules are vague. That's a datum.
3) Squirrelloid statted up his character, bought his equipment, and played through the adventure not knowing what was coming.
Why do I get the feeling I'm walking into an attack, here?
I don't think an attack is deserved here, Chris. You are absolutely right - this is a playtest thread, not a place to debate character.
A few of us questioned the mechanics of squirrelloid's choices, which enabled some good clarification of rules issues, which in turn should help Jason.
Squirrelloid, we've had our differences, but I'm with you on this one. Thanks for the playtest.
Alphonse Joly wrote: Squirrelloid wrote: If you have a rules complaint about the way things were handled, articulate it. Oh, I think that the other posters who articulated their complaints about permissive DMing and overly convenient happenstance in your favor covered it fairly well.
I was simply talking about (since you asked) the fact that you appear to have taken a pdf and spent half an hour writing down "the best" solution to each problem and then posting it. And despite this, you still felt the need to twist (and break) the rules, not to mention that when questioned about some blatantly abusive practices, the justification was "Well it wouldn't have mattered anyway." You know, information advantage is part of the wizard's bag of tricks. Nothing in the adventure stops me from spending a day scrying the enemy. That's sort of like reading the adventure for 1/2 an hour, because its site-based. No scry defense + site-based adventure shouldn't happen at 10th level, much less 15th - that's just asking the party to destroy it.
Not a single rule was twisted or broken. Cohorts very clearly gain experience. He was taken at a particular level, the amount of experience he earns is determinable from that based on how cohorts work. That means he's going to be level 13 when the wizard is level 15.
Its not nearly as clear how much gear a cohort receives, but they receive PC-level gear during actual play once they're a cohort - its certainly not twisting the complete lack of rules on the matter to extrapolate backwards and assume they had been collecting PC-level gear prior to being a cohort.
And line of effect through a ring gate? The ring gate specifically says you can cast spells through it, which is the definition of line of effect. That's pure RAW. The only possible interpretation of rules with the ring gate was whether sound passes through it, and its not clear one way or another given the necessary passing of noticeable mass through the ring gate which would accompany such a property. I was very up-front about this issue and how it was ruled - and gave a reason for that ruling (barring a specific magical exception, we assume real world physics otherwise holds and has the appropriate logical consequences, because anything else leads to magic tea party, which is not a game either of us has been interested in playing since we were five).
Alphonse Joy wrote:
Of course it wouldn't have mattered anyway! You could have built a tree stand and fireballed the village while whistling Dixie and they would have drank an invisibility potion and stood around (as far as I can tell). You've got a person who's supposedly experienced enough to have survived thus far leading a group of baddies who definitely was alerted to "something going on" at the very, very, very least, who then decides "Hmmm.. Bad times abrewin'... Hows about I stand here some more?"
The BBEG had one round to figure out that something bad was going down. He had no way of knowing the mercenaries in the barracks rooms were already dying. Heck, that only started about 24 seconds before anything noticeable happened in the BBEG room. (2 rounds to cast Cloudkills, 1 round to position for BBEG, 1 round for the Mass Charm spell, making it 4 rounds before the heightened Undeath to Death spell did something noticeable). Technically, he's surprised, and doesn't expect to win initiative (he didn't in-game either). And then he's controlled and its over. What was he supposed to have done, other than hope the adventure was written better?
Alphonse Joy wrote:
...dare I suggest avoiding the sitting down with your DM and telling him "this is how things are going to go, you react this way." or whatever you like to call your pregame tete a tete that generates this type of shameful display.
Both the person DMing and I have abundant DMing experience. We also tend to DM somewhat differently. We both agreed that DMing style was not what was being playtested here - the rules were.
And by necessity the adventure as it was written was also being playtested (there being no standard adventure for a 15th level character that I'm aware of). The adventure was chosen at random from an internet search - it happens to suck, badly. But the DM had no idea until he read it (after the character was generated, mind you), and I had no idea until I played it. Neither of us being in the habit of using published adventures, we have no idea how typical it is (I gather from some of the comments that its worse than average, which is probably a good sign).
Tell me, what would you have done differently as the DM and *why*, remembering we're sticking to strict RAW (to the best of our ability during a game played in real time) and using the adventure exactly as written.
Well, i don't post often, but i don't have any cries of "foul" on squirril's posted playtest. Using RAW he did what he was able to. i look forward to other module playtests (especially those that DO have some framework appropriate for the character's abilities for his level)
thanks for the looksee into your mindset/tactics squirril!
In the interest of the play test. Since you created the co-hort at a certain level (possibly 6th) then it's fair to assume they've adventured with you this long. This is the logic behind your experience levelling of them.
You are supposed to equip your co horts yourself, which I believe is the foundation of a few arguments against you (I nearly rushed in and did the same I must admit). However, since your wizard is acting solo and taking on missions that normally accomodate 4 or more players (even if badly written) then I see no reason why you and your co-hort wouldn't have more than enough loot to be at wealth by level. After all, you should have wealth available to 4 players of your level in these modules. I haven't crunched the numbers on how much XP you get etc to see if the wealth spread and xp levelling change equivocally however. Just noting that as a DM, I'd rule your co-hort would be equipped at WPL with the resoning you provide.
The assumption here of course is that your wizard was soloing the entire time he had the co-hort but we're not here to test if that is possible. You're trying to prove if a level 15 wizard can solo adventures and at least in this one they did. I suspect even without the ring gate you may have been able to do this one as you use of scry etc before hand was very cleverly done. I'd be interested to see at what level you (and others) believe a Wizard could start soloing. It might give a bench mark of comparisons between classes.
I'm looking forward to another playtest with this guy, in another module. If you have access to them, try out some of the Age of Worms games from the old dungeon mags at around the 15th level mark (spire of long shadows is a toughy, if a bit below level 15. I still think it wold challenge your solo play). I've stated before I don't feel the power gap is as big as others point out (and we've clashed on it at least once I think), but this type of playtest is useful. It certainly gave me some insight as DM about the things my players could start throwing my way since my long running game just hit level 15.
Cheers
Ruemere, I am not Squirreloid. I didn't have any part in this playtest. That is also not Aelryinth you are getting onto. I'm good enough at analyzing people to easily tell the difference.
Crusader of Logic wrote: Ruemere, I am not Squirreloid. I didn't have any part in this playtest. That is also not Aelryinth you are getting onto. I'm good enough at analyzing people to easily tell the difference. My bad. Apparently lack of sleep with overdose of coffeine does funny things to one's memory.
Still, this guy reminded me of Authority/Aelryinth in the respect of disregarding opening post content and comments by neutral parties.
Regards,
Ruemere
This has been a very interesting thread. I do believe that the purpose of playtesting is to identify areas of the rules that are unclear, untenable, or easily exploited. So in that regard, it seems that the playtest has been a great success in identifying (IMO):
1. Cohorts need clarification
2. Ring gates need clarification and perhaps re-evaluation
3. Spell save DCs may need re-evaluation when compared to save bonuses (I say 'may' because the opponents were such a non-challenge it's difficult to assess)
4. Removing XP from crafting costs may need re-evaluation
It's unfortunate that the playtest was with such a poor example of a high-level module. I can't for the life of me understand how the author expected it to actually challenge a group of 15th level PCs. To a large extent, this became a playtest of a poorly designed module that exposed the weaknesses of the module, rather than the abilities of the character. This highlights one of the difficulties of playtesting, in that the scenario has a very large impact on the usefulness of the playtest.
I think it would be very interesting to re-engineer the adventure by giving the enemies access to and use of some of the resources that high-level opponents should have. Make the adventure a legitimate 15th-level challenge. Then re-run the playtest and compare results. In this way, you'd have two points of comparison and would be able to evaluate how the character can exploit glaring weaknesses (the original scenario) as well as how the character performs in the face of real opposition.
PS - Criticize the work, not the person. There are too many variables which you cannot know to make a valid judgment of a person, and it's just plain rude.
Giving all love to bonuses saying you took the cohort at 15th level the best cohort you could come up with would be 11th level. How did you get it to 13th?
I know this has been asked once or twice but I've never seen an answer ckimming through this post.
15(lv)-2(cha)+1 Fair and generous + 1 special power -1 cohort of different allignment + 2 base of operations=16
This is being generous and not taking -2 for your sim, -1 for aloofness, come on you solo adventure with a 7 cha how approachable are you going to be. This would take you down to 13 and a 9th level cohort.
Texicutioner wrote: Giving all love to bonuses saying you took the cohort at 15th level the best cohort you could come up with would be 11th level. How did you get it to 13th?
I know this has been asked once or twice but I've never seen an answer ckimming through this post.
15(lv)-2(cha)+1 Fair and generous + 1 special power -1 cohort of different allignment + 2 base of operations=16
This is being generous and not taking -2 for your sim, -1 for aloofness, come on you solo adventure with a 7 cha how approachable are you going to be. This would take you down to 13 and a 9th level cohort.
1. All the reasons are to be found on the first page of this thread. Ctrl+F for "cohort" to find the posts.
2. It's easy to manipulate Cohort's level. All you need to do, is to bring him for some adventures and wait until they level up a bit and catch up. And while getting the feat, just make sure you have a right item (+Charisma) with you.
Leadership feat is known for its abusability.
3. The cohort was intended mostly to provide some support in place of a missing party. Hence, it could have been handwaved.
It's a great pity that Squirelloid never followed up with next posts.
Regards,
Ruemere
Now that I've read more of this post I'm not.
1st Modules should not have all the answers. the basics should be set up and then the DM uses what is available to make for a challenging game for the party. Not every contigency should be written into the book.
2nd Scry was used inappropriately, blind lucjk says someone would have spotted it hence ending his ability to find all the info he discovered.
3rd The ring gate is great but and the item would be invisible but not the effect of the gate. You would see what was going on on the otherside as well, It is specifically not one way.
4th casting through the gate while effective does not mean targeting through the gate. Area effect versus target "x"
5th nice try on the xp. Didn't defeat most of the adventure, you bypassed it with no actual risk, not the same when it comes to experience.
6th How'ld you get all the loot?
Texicutioner wrote: 1st Modules should not have all the answers. the basics should be set up and then the DM uses what is available to make for a challenging game for the party. Not every contigency should be written into the book.
Having just discovered this thread and read through it, I have to agree with this point. I have not read the adventure itself, so I do not know what options and resources were available to the bad guys or not. However, I do know a couple things:
1. Darrin Drader is not a moron. Whether this may be the most poorly written adventure he ever put together, something that got mangled in editing, or soemthing else altogether I don't know.
2. It seems to have been taken as a given by most posters that this is not a well-put-together adventure. Having not read it (so take this with a grain of salt), I could see a possibility where that may not be the case. It may simply be a minimalist adventure that relies on the DM to come up with most of the tactics, countermeasures, etc, rather than explicitly writing them in. If you've ever read or run through most of the higher level Expert and Companion adventures from the old days, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about.
Commercial adventures are usually written at a baseline for average parties and probably in actuality below-average players. Squirreloid is obviously a highly skilled player and made short work of a scenario that a less-experienced player may have had a tough time with. Sure the visibility distances at the beginning are a big problem (easily fixed by a DM--though I know that wasn't the point of the playtest), but that could come down to a simple typo or bad edit, not the moronism of the author or even the editor. In addition by changing the Name to Three Fork rather than Three Forks it becomes descriptive of the number of "tines" in the fork rather than the number "forks" in the river. Easily a typo (probably not if mentioned in mutliple areas), a simple oversight, or even highly realistic as exhibited by the questionable naming conventions used by real-life settlers who founded townships.
Many (maybe most) authors will sacrifice a description of point-by-point tactics in favor of more encounters, story, etc. I know if I've got a story I want to tell, I'll leave detailed tactics in the hands of the DM to tailor to his game rather than leave out a plot point I want to use. Plus at high levels, it becomes a diminishing return on trying to outline every possible tactic that could be used. You can get a very thorough encounter and end up with not much else to go with it due to word constraints on the assignment. Those are real barriers that the writer must contend with and if something's got to give, it makes sense that it's somthigng the DM is going to adjudicate and modify anyway based on what occurs in the game.
I think Squirelloid's playtest gives some very good data about weaknesses or areas of interest in the Beta rules. I think the judgment on the quality of the adventure (and writer in this case) may need further consideration, though. Once again, I haven't read it. But if the wizards, for instance, even had see invisibility in their repretoire, there's no reason to think they wouldn't be using it on a fairly consistent basis simply because that's what paranoid wizards up to no good probably do. It's a resource, they should use it. Maybe they didn't have it, in which case they got what they deserved and the DM has two choices--let the PC get the benefits and pleasure of making full use of his abilities on an unprepared enemy (visceraly a lot of fun, but it gets old very quick in a campaign) or make modifications to account for the skill of his players. Because clearly this adventure wasn't written from the perspective of players making optimal use of every ability available to them. It's like in a melee when a player takes 10 minutes poring over the battlemat to determine his most beneficial and optimal action. Making him do it in a literal 6 seconds usually makes things a bit more messy and interesting. A lot of players are going to ride into town through the snowstorm and take the manor the hard way. That's apparently the assumption the adventure was written for. There are the building blocks for it. If the players are more skilled than that, it's up to the DM to account for that or not. All adventures are not universal and incorporate certain assumptions either tacitly or explicitly. They are not written for anyone's particular home game or group (except maybe the author's and pre-publication playtests). It's a lot easier to make an adventure harder than written than easier than written. Darrin wasn't writing an adventure for a balanced playtest of a 15th-level party (or single PC). He was writing a scenario within a certain word limit that could be enjoyable and potentially challenging to a 15th-level party if played in a particular way. Whether he succeeded at that or not is a very different discussion that what I have seen here.
Texicutioner wrote: Now that I've read more of this post I'm not.
1st Modules should not have all the answers. the basics should be set up and then the DM uses what is available to make for a challenging game for the party. Not every contigency should be written into the book.
2nd Scry was used inappropriately, blind lucjk says someone would have spotted it hence ending his ability to find all the info he discovered.
3rd The ring gate is great but and the item would be invisible but not the effect of the gate. You would see what was going on on the otherside as well, It is specifically not one way.
4th casting through the gate while effective does not mean targeting through the gate. Area effect versus target "x"
5th nice try on the xp. Didn't defeat most of the adventure, you bypassed it with no actual risk, not the same when it comes to experience.
6th How'ld you get all the loot?
It's easy to criticize missing poster. It's even easier to do so when one did neither read the adventure nor other relevant posts by Squirelloid in previous editions of designer forums.
1. The chief problem was that the module author did not take into account abilities of well built wizard. He should at least state that some stuff were left up to GM's judgement (i.e. some humility works wonders).
2. Judgement call. Blind luck does not equal certainty.
3. It's your interpretation of the rules. It's apparently different from his.
4. See 3.
5. Intelligent people should not be penalized for being intelligent. He apparently defeated enemies so denying rewards would be inappropriate.
6. Who knows? Having killed every significant opponent he could travel there later in person.
Regards,
Ruemere
Greg A. Vaughan wrote: [...]
1. Darrin Drader is not a moron. Whether this may be the most poorly written adventure he ever put together, something that got mangled in editing, or soemthing else altogether I don't know.
I do agree with you. Designing adventures gets much harder at higher levels since character resources grow beyond scope of sane countermeasures - hence the multitude of non-impregnable dungeons made by epic creatures in high level adventures. Apparently at that stage of his career, Darrin was not entirely ready to tackle this subject.
Greg A. Vaughan wrote: 2. It seems to have been taken as a given by most posters that this is not a well-put-together adventure. Having not read it (so take this with a grain of salt), I could see a possibility where that may not be the case. [...] I think you should believe Squirrelloid on this. He may come up a bit aggressive but his posts were always backed by solid interpretation of rules.
Greg A. Vaughan wrote: Commercial adventures are usually written at a baseline for average parties and probably in actuality below-average players. Squirreloid is obviously a highly skilled player and made short work of a scenario that a less-experienced player may have had a tough time with. Umm. He was ready to own any adventure - he was out to show some nastiness of high level Wizard. The issues he had with the adventure were a bit different - the opponents lacked means of effectively reacting to Wizardly spells. In short, this is was low level adventure with beefed up mobs, separated by invisible walls (i.e. no means to coordinate defense among groups) and lacking ability to detect or deal with spells.
It bears emphasizing here that high level adventure designers need to take into account not just increased damage output but special effects of divinations, illusions and area effect silent kills.
[skipping several paragraphs - I agree with most of your points]
Greg A. Vaughan wrote: Darrin wasn't writing an adventure for a balanced playtest of a 15th-level party (or single PC). He was writing a scenario within a certain word limit that could be enjoyable and potentially challenging to a 15th-level party if played in a particular way. Whether he succeeded at that or not is a very different discussion that what I have seen here. Basically, if you make assumptions about the characters suitable for an adventure you design, you should put them up front (and probably also at the back of the cover). One of the reasons Squirreloid picked the adventure, was that he was not aware of adventure's problematic challenge level.
Personally, whenever I run my own or adjust someone else's scenarios, I always try to familiarize myself with character abilities. I do not intend to write stuff in such a way as to prevent players from winning or to provide them generic monsters. However, when I do put the effort, I always try to accommodate to growing range of character abilities, especially divinations and illusions.
SH&T combo is less of a problem if the problems faced by the party are too complex and too subtle for simple information gathering spells. When you need to put together pieces of information from various sources, interact with NPCs in non-violent ways, chase a moving target or deal with a threat which does not easily conform to simple "generic Fighter of appropriate level" challenge type or, even simpler "undead horde on rampage", you will not be satisfied with information you get from your divinations.
Illusions are harder to deal with (unless your opponents are always Wizards or monsters with Tremorsense), but you can live with them provided that Save-or-Die spells are appropriately limited (use several BBEGs or use BBEGs with various stages of visibility - i.e. you kill one and find that you killed the weaker front guy).
Concluding, I am far from bashing Darrin. I am also far from bashing Squirreloid. I would not defend the adventure design though, as it simply was not intended to match up with a resourceful wizard.
A druid character in one of the campaigns I participated as player took a different approach to similar adventure type - he simply waited for a a few clouds and used several simultaneous Call Lightnings (2nd ed AD&D) to pound opponent's hideout into swamp, while the party was simply making sure that no one was getting out alive. We wasted a nice adventure, missed opportunity to obtain some items (we did some excavatiing afterwards, though) but nobody died and all the bad guys had been dealt with.
Regards,
Ruemere
The etire purpose of this playtest was to prove how powerful high level wizards were. It also happened at a time when people were arguing all over the place about how unbalanced wizards and fighters were.
The OP was an advocate of saying that fighters were redundent after level 5 or so and went about providing evidence for his stance using this playtest. He actually made some great inroads in showing certain weakenesses of some of the classes, but he and his DM made a number of house rule calls to get it done, which opened them up to criticism.
They did show that static dungeons are not necessarily the best thing to take on for high level games. You need to have damn good motivation not to just demolish the place. Many of the locations and events that are occuring in the end phase of Age of Woms that my group are now playing would've chewed up his wizard and friend becasue there just wasn't enough of them around to counter the sheer number of enemy actions occuring. They also wouldnt allow the scry and teleport option he tried (check out Kongen Thulnir in kings of teh rift if you want to know why)
Scry and teleport are also interesting, though the method they used here was open to failure. A DC 20 intelligence check is all it takes to spot a scry, and given how long the guys was doing this and the number of mooks he passed the odds of it not getting spotted at least once during the day would be nigh on impossible. Once it was spotted, the defenders would be aware of the approach of magic using enemies and defence would change accordingly.
If DM's aren't willing to change the tactics of their high level critters to match the tactics of their players, then you are going to get situations where a Wizard can solo a dungeon (albeit with a high level cleric cohort and simulacra). Expeting an author to write a scenario where every contingency is catered for is pretty ridiculous.
People offered squirreloid a number of other scenarios to try out his wizard and cohort, but he never tried, probably due to the sheer amount of flack he copped.
Oh well, I think the Beta is making inroads in changing some of the balance issues he was trying to point out.
Cheers
Wrath wrote: The etire purpose of this playtest was to prove how powerful high level wizards were. It also happened at a time when people were arguing all over the place about how unbalanced wizards and fighters were.
The OP was an advocate of saying that fighters were redundent after level 5 or so and went about providing evidence for his stance using this playtest. He actually made some great inroads in showing certain weakenesses of some of the classes, but he and his DM made a number of house rule calls to get it done, which opened them up to criticism.
They did show that static dungeons are not necessarily the best thing to take on for high level games. You need to have damn good motivation not to just demolish the place. Many of the locations and events that are occuring in the end phase of Age of Woms that my group are now playing would've chewed up his wizard and friend becasue there just wasn't enough of them around to counter the sheer number of enemy actions occuring. They also wouldnt allow the scry and teleport option he tried (check out Kongen Thulnir in kings of teh rift if you want to know why)
Scry and teleport are also interesting, though the method they used here was open to failure. A DC 20 intelligence check is all it takes to spot a scry, and given how long the guys was doing this and the number of mooks he passed the odds of it not getting spotted at least once during the day would be nigh on impossible. Once it was spotted, the defenders would be aware of the approach of magic using enemies and defence would change accordingly.
If DM's aren't willing to change the tactics of their high level critters to match the tactics of their players, then you are going to get situations where a Wizard can solo a dungeon (albeit with a high level cleric cohort and simulacra). Expeting an author to write a scenario where every contingency is catered for is pretty ridiculous.
People offered squirreloid a number of other scenarios to try out his wizard and cohort, but he never tried, probably due to the sheer amount of flack he copped.
Oh well, I think the Beta is making inroads in changing some of the balance issues he was trying to point out.
Cheers
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Wrath wrote: ...
Scry and teleport are also interesting, though the method they used here was open to failure. A DC 20 intelligence check is all it takes to spot a scry, and given how long the guys was doing this and the number of mooks he passed the odds of it not getting spotted at least once during the day would be nigh on impossible. Once it was spotted, the defenders would be aware of the approach of magic using enemies and defence would change accordingly.
If DM's aren't willing to change the tactics of their high level critters to match the tactics of their players, then you are going to get situations where a Wizard can solo a dungeon (albeit with a high level cleric cohort and simulacra). Expecting an author to write a scenario where every contingency is catered for is pretty ridiculous.
...
Totally agreed. You make a number of similar points that I have been trying to make in other threads, only you did it more eloquently and succinctly than I have.
Cheers
Wrath wrote: The etire purpose of this playtest was to prove how powerful high level wizards were. It also happened at a time when people were arguing all over the place about how unbalanced wizards and fighters were.
The OP was an advocate of saying that fighters were redundent after level 5 or so and went about providing evidence for his stance using this playtest. He actually made some great inroads in showing certain weakenesses of some of the classes, but he and his DM made a number of house rule calls to get it done, which opened them up to criticism.
They did show that static dungeons are not necessarily the best thing to take on for high level games. You need to have damn good motivation not to just demolish the place. Many of the locations and events that are occuring in the end phase of Age of Woms that my group are now playing would've chewed up his wizard and friend becasue there just wasn't enough of them around to counter the sheer number of enemy actions occuring. They also wouldnt allow the scry and teleport option he tried (check out Kongen Thulnir in kings of teh rift if you want to know why)
Scry and teleport are also interesting, though the method they used here was open to failure. A DC 20 intelligence check is all it takes to spot a scry, and given how long the guys was doing this and the number of mooks he passed the odds of it not getting spotted at least once during the day would be nigh on impossible. Once it was spotted, the defenders would be aware of the approach of magic using enemies and defence would change accordingly.
If DM's aren't willing to change the tactics of their high level critters to match the tactics of their players, then you are going to get situations where a Wizard can solo a dungeon (albeit with a high level cleric cohort and simulacra). Expeting an author to write a scenario where every contingency is catered for is pretty ridiculous.
People offered squirreloid a number of other scenarios to try out his wizard and cohort, but he never tried, probably due to...
QFT
Also in my games there is not way he could cast stuff through the gate and stay invisible. He would need to use Improved Invisibility for this trick. Listen checks would also be normal.
But the whole thing comes down to DM not doing anything that is not said in the adventure explicitly.
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