Not sure f Pathfinder RPG will make high level combat work and are wondering if anything has been or will be done about various spell combinations and broken spells.
Not sure f Pathfinder RPG will make high level combat work and are wondering if anything has been or will be done about various spell combinations and broken spells.
It will work as well as 3.5e if not better.
Games in 3.5 tended to collapse around about level 11-13 or so and I was the DM. I could design decent high level encounters but it took to long and I really had to whore the system and splat books.
Combat gets wonky at high levels because of casters. Casters don't need the splatbooks. Their best tricks are in core. Splatbooks just makes everyone else slightly less trivial.
With that said, more specifically things get wonky because enemies have no hope of countering everything the caster does. So unless they plan on 4.0izing the caster, I don't see how they'll be fixing it. Especially since for whatever illogical reason they buffed casters and nerfed everyone else.
I don't think much can be done to fix high level play in any edition of D&D. The numbers are too high and there's just too many options.
Limiting spell effects to 3 maximum (as per the optional rule in PFRPG) is a great idea, it'll do a lot to speed up high level play. I just don't think it'll do enough. Fortunately, it seems like Paizo won't be writing too many high level adventures. So my group and I can continue pretending levels higher than 14 just don't exist for PCs.
The way I've played for the last 20 years, levels 15+ are really for villains. I would be satisfied if there was just an "enter at your own risk" sign at the start of 16th level. Maybe if we stop pretending it's supposed to work, players will stop expecting it to.
Okay, so that's kind of facetious, but some honest guidelines from the designers about sweet spots would be welcome.
This isn't the first high-level thread - a quick sampling:
I think there's some merit to a soft level cap, if it keeps the game manageable and fun for the DM. Are you familiar with E6? (Random pointer, not really the 'home site'.)
It's designed for people who prefer lower-level D&D play, but you could cap the levels as 12 or 15 or wherever you feel comfortable. Then, every 12K or 15K XP, allow the players to take another feat. It appears to level off numeric progressions quite handily at a point the DM is comfortable with, while still allowing a bit of progress.
I think it is important to have everyone in the world subject to the same caps and not have the bad guys higher level than any PC can attain. There are some rules in E6 about casting higher level splls as ritual magic, or taking a feat for one-time use of high spells. Your evil wizard casting Gate may have blown a feat to get access to the spell and/or may need to cast it ritually. If the players can disrupt the spell and prevent him from gating in a demon prince, then he can't try again until he gains another feat. That's drama, right?
I was thinking recently that the 'right' solution to epic levels might be E20. Don't progress any of the attack or save progressions past 20th level or 20th hit dice, but let stats and feats increase. The downside is that this breaks a lot of existing absurdly powerful epic monsters.
Personally, what I'd like to see from Pathfinder (or the Internets) is some sort of 'classed template', so I can add five or ten levels to a monster quickly. There were also some good suggestions from Monte Cook in Dungeon? magazine about how to cheat and quickly buff monsters, which turn into a section on quickly advancing monsters in the Pathfinder MM.
I don't think much can be done to fix high level play in any edition of D&D. The numbers are too high and there's just too many options.
Limiting spell effects to 3 maximum (as per the optional rule in PFRPG) is a great idea, it'll do a lot to speed up high level play. I just don't think it'll do enough. Fortunately, it seems like Paizo won't be writing too many high level adventures. So my group and I can continue pretending levels higher than 14 just don't exist for PCs.
All capping buffs does is make the guy saying 'Sorry, you're not a caster, you can't function beyond this point in the game.' slap the character he's speaking to in the face a few times and deliver a few papercuts with PHB pages held between his fingers, and then Telekinetically drop a bucket of salt onto his head.
Level cap?
So basically you imply that once characters have reached the maximum level the DM can manage, they are as good as they can be, they stop getting experience for the have learned all they could, and the lvl 16 human blackguard is some kind of supernatural being capable of learning more?
Even more, the wizard sees the casting of a gate spell, identifies it with spellcraft, and still knows he will never be able to learn the spell for, despite his 22 intelligence score, he is far to small minded to ever learn a higher level spell, no matter how much he trains?Needless be said, i'm all for creative hi level encounter design, and i'm all against caps as solutions
No, no level cap.
I'm calling for an admission in the GMing chapter about what actually happens. You'll note I mentioned it as an "Enter at your own risk" sign. This means I believe that the stories you can tell at those levels of power are different, and require a different kind of work on behalf of the GM.
"Soft level cap" is a way to describe it. The Paizo APs are actually a great example... the story is usually done by about 15th. Characters above 15 can be played— they can be great fun to play— but the real role of 15-20 in the design is for "villains of ultimate power." This is of course, my opinion.
The alternative is for PRPG to extend the state of denial we entered in 3.5. The game changes at these levels! THE GAME CHANGES. You can't keep playing the way you were playing. Epic Levels are a preposterous solution.
There should never be a rule saying "this is the highest level". However, if PRPG is to remain compatible with 3.5, it inherits this limitation. The best course is to admit that the game has a sweet spot, and players and GMs should recognize the sweet spot. Then they should ignore it if they like, but at least no one can run around calling everything broken when it fails to perform in ways it was never designed to.
The HP boost options and the general power increase at low levels have successfully made early levels fun and survivable. If we recognize 15th as the upper level of expected play, then we have a full adventurer lifecycle, and 15-20 fills the role of "epic" levels. Paizo's APs reinforce this, and this is how I've viewed the game for 20 years.
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I've developed, edited, written, and run a fair amount of high level adventures, and I agree that once you head past 13th level in 3.5 things DO get pretty crazy. It's a different game at that level, just as mid level's a different game than low level. We ARE trying to handle the high level end of things though. Some of the things that I find slow the game down (and possible fixes) include:
1) Too many buff spells. High level combats too easily turn into long sessions of "How many spells can I have going at once?" I wonder if limiting the number of buff spells a character can have at once is the solution? Basically, each character would have, say, four "buff slots" that he can use to put spell effects on, with additional spell effects simply not having enough "soul" or "aura" to attach to if there's already too many spells active? The number of slots is of course fluid; it's probably cool to tie it to level so that at first level you have 1 slot and 20th you have four or five? This certainly keeps things from being too complex with having dozens of spell effects running at once. Of course, magic items like boots of speed would still allow their effects to function since they're already using a "slot" and their magic is self-contained. Buff slots would only limit effects from spells, spell-like abilities, spell trigger items, and spell completion items.
2) Spell durations in minutes. By recasting spells to have 1 round/level or 10 minutes/level (or even 1 hour/level) durations and making the 1 minute/level durations rare or nonexistant, we might be able to cut back the amount of "just before combat prep" as well. Basically, make buff spells short and powerful things you fire up during a fight as you need them, or make them longer lasting so that you cast them at the start of the dungeon day so they'll last for multiple encounters.
3) Summoned monsters. Conjurers and necromancers who call up huge armies of monsters to fight for them slow things down too. Is limiting summoning effects to one per caster at a time too hard core?
4) Dispel Magic: This spell is super common at high level, and especially combined with limitless buff spell slots, it crashes the game. Nothing much more lame than having the players spend an hour selecting a dozen or two buff spells, only to have the first encounter be a greater dispel magic that then has to sift through them all. Limiting the number of buff spells you can have going would really streamline this, of course. As would making the mechanics for dispel magic less complex. Something like: "Everyone in the area makes a will save against the spell, and if they fail, one random spell effect is dispelled."
5) Swift and immediate spells. Combat has a cadence and rhythm to it. Everyone gets a turn that's basically one move action and one standard action (or both combined to one full action). Near the end of 3.5's official support, there was a sudden bloating of swift and immediate and free action spells that basically gave players the opportunity to do even more in their turn. While in game these may go by fast and quick... in actual game play there's not much difference in the time it takes to resolve a normal spell and an immediate action spell. In fact... they often take even longer, since many of these actions are designed to interrupt what's currently going on, forcing the GM to pause and rethink and parse the new information and then possibly have to rethink what's going on. Furthermore, a character with too many swift and quickened and immediate spells starts to hog the spotlight and, effectively, takes extra turns which forces the other players to wait even longer between their own turns. A good solution to this might be to make all spells with casting times faster than a move action be counted as quickened spells, limiting their use to only one per round so that AT THE MOST a character gets three actions over the course of his turn. I'd be happy with seeing immediate actions go away entirely, to be honest, and limit actual actions for PCs that they take to their turn only. This isn't to say they can have reactive stuff like contingency... but they wouldn't be able to immediately cast spells at the spur of the moment to counter things that are going on during other folks' turns.
ANYWAY... those are some of my preliminary thoughts on why the game slows down at high levels and some ways to address the problem. I'm very much looking forward to the playtesting period for high level play to begin!
Most of us know the broken spells and effects. Some effects should just be removed and other spells can be strippedback to their 2nd ed versions- like Timestop and Gate.
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I agree with most of JJ's points about this. I have one small disagreement and one additional suggestion.
I think that swift spells are awesome when designed properly. Particularly, I like swift spells that allow a Ranger to fire a hail of arrows or somesuch. Basically, I think swift spells are great for Rangers and Paladins, who otherwise never use their spells, because it's not worth giving up your chance to attack when your spells are so weak.
Otherwise they tie up the game, and interrupts are the worst culprit for that (although sometimes it's fun)
The other thing I find at high level is that penalty spells are just as bad as Dispel Magic. Spells that do ability damage have effects that trickle through your whole character sheet and are hard to track. You just took Dex damage? Don't forget to take a penalty to ranged attacks and Dex skills. That's no problem. But guess what, your Dex was a prereq for half of one of your feat trees. You no longer have access to those. Whoops, that strength damage means you are now medium encumbered, so you lose access to all your special abilities that only work if you are lightly encumbered. Etc.
I'd like to see ability damage effects converted to negative ability points in the same way that level drain turned into negative levels. Give some concrete end-zone effects that don't require you to recalculate your whole character sheet.
3) Summoned monsters. Conjurers and necromancers who call up huge armies of monsters to fight for them slow things down too. Is limiting summoning effects to one per caster at a...
Summoners are cool, though, so that's not a solution.
In large part, the amount of paperwork expected of a summoner is what kills it for me. I can't believe we're expected to Template animals on the fly... cross referencing three books or writing up a whole statblock is ridiculous. They should have the statblocks for summonables in an appendix.
As for cascading ability damage,
some guy a while back suggested that we remove cascade damage entirely— effects that damage abilities should explicitly state which rolls and ratings are effected, even if that means restating all the things affected by ability drain. I agree.
Most of the caster issues are solved by the guy knowing what he's doing. Which isn't that unreasonable to expect from the person playing the most complex character at the table.
I keep reference cards for my abilities. My turn tends to resolve faster than anyone else despite having at least two dozen distinct options on any given round.
Most of the caster issues are solved by the guy knowing what he's doing. I keep reference cards for my abilities. My turn tends to resolve faster than anyone else.
QFT. I play wizards a lot; I go by the maxim, "if I don't know exactly what this spell does, and can't describe it at an instant's notice, then I have no business preparing that spell this session -- it'll have to wait until I [the player] researches it more thoroughly." Maybe it takes some alphabetized (or otherwise well-organized) crib sheets in addition to your character sheet. So be it, that's the price you pay for playing a wizard.
For buffs, it's useful for the DM to have a spreadsheet for AC, hp, saves, attacks, damage that has, in addition to level-based and ability bonuses, enhancement, deflection, dodge, morale.... all the main types, with spaces to write in the effects granting them, and then some spaces for other effects (displacement, etc.). When something is dispelled, you go through, X out that box, and figure out the new total. A pad of preprinted "buff tracking sheets" would be a great Paizo offering -- people running high-level campaigns would certainly invest in those.
Although the wiz explaining what his own abilities do does require a good deal of confidence from the master.
I try not to play with people I can't trust. Really, if the players are going to cheat at something in which you can't even "win," they're a bunch of cretins.
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4) Dispel Magic: This spell is super common at high level, and especially combined with limitless buff spell slots, it crashes the game. Nothing much more lame than having the players spend an hour selecting a dozen or two buff spells, only to have the first encounter be a greater dispel magic that then has to sift through them all. Limiting the number of buff spells you can have going would really streamline this, of course. As would making the mechanics for dispel magic less complex. Something like: "Everyone in the area makes a will save against the spell, and if they fail, one random spell effect is dispelled.
I've got a simple solution for this ... only allow dispel magic to dispel effects up to 3rd level, and only allow greater dispel magic to dispel effects up to 6th level. Create a uber-dispel magic spell to dispel spells up to 9th level, and that will limit the extreme counterspelling with a single 3rd level spell slot ...
3) Summoned monsters. Conjurers and necromancers who call up huge armies of monsters to fight for them slow things down too. Is limiting summoning effects....
This is not a good idea. Summoners are cool. WotC made this mistake with Astral Construct also. A better solution is for DMs to insist that the player who plays a summoner (or anything else with a lot of mooks under their control), does so in an organized and sensible fashion.
Pre-bookmarked pages, notebooks with stats on them, index cards, chips, all these things help. The answer to 'this slows the game down' should be 'how can I speed it up?', not 'let's remove it'.
Peace,
tfad
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For buffs, it's useful for the DM to have a spreadsheet for AC, hp, saves, attacks, damage that has, in addition to level-based and ability bonuses, enhancement, deflection, dodge, morale.... all the main types, with spaces to write in the effects granting them, and then some spaces for other effects (displacement, etc.). When something is dispelled, you go through, X out that box, and figure out the new total. A pad of preprinted "buff tracking sheets" would be a great Paizo offering -- people running high-level campaigns would certainly invest in those.
I can't help but think that if the answer is, "The DM needs a spreadsheet," then we're asking the wrong question.
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If it were a design decision from scratch, I'd probably limit buffs to two per person: one with duration measured in hours, and one with a duration measured in rounds. I would, as mentioned above, make short-duration buffs powerful enough to be worth casting in combat, and make long-duration buffs more resistant to dispel magic.
Unfortunately, that seems like much too radical a change for PFRPG.
--Jeff
Summoners are cool, though, so that's not a solution.
3) Summoned monsters. Conjurers and necromancers who call up huge armies of monsters to fight for them slow things down too. Is limiting summoning effects to one per caster at a...
Summoners are cool but if you limit them to 1 summon spell active at a time they can still be cool without having a vast array of creatures complicating the battlefield.
In the end some complexity is going to have to be sacrificed to make higher level play more reasonable.
Point-to-point solutions:
1) Too many buff spells.
Instead of limiting the number of buffs available, dig deeper and find the real issue: large numbers of buff spells are difficult to sort out, simply because of figuring out what stacks with what. If we instead streamline the spells themselves by rewriting them to make them interact with each other more simply, the problem would go away.
For example, let's take the Bard spell Good Hope and the Cleric spell Heroes' Feast. Both grant a bonus to hit. Sounds simple, right? Until someone points out that they're both morale bonuses, and so everybody's got to scratch off that +1 from Heroes' Feast and replace it with the +2 from Good Hope, when it'd be much easier to just add them both.
As another example, let's take the Bardic Music effect Inspire Courage, the Cleric spell Heroes' Feast, and the Wizard spell Heroism. All three provide morale bonuses to various values. It would be nice and simple if they all added up, but not only do we have to figure out that they don't stack with each other, but we have to figure out which pieces of each buff does stack! No wonder resolving buffs at high level takes so long!
The confusion begins as early as level 1, when Inspire Courage doesn't stack with Bless. That one gets a lot of players, and the issue is the same at high levels; there's just a whole lot more of it.
We can fix it by spreading out the named bonuses among the classes, so that their typical buffs don't conflict with each other. Make the Morale bonus exclusive to the Bard, and make Sacred exclusive to the Cleric, for example. Then, take buff spells within a class that overlap each other and rename them as one spell chain. For example, look at Pathfinder Divine Favor and Pathfinder Divine Power. All Divine Power is is an improved version of Divine Favor, so why not keep things simple and rename it to Improved Divine Favor?
If these changes are made, it would be much easier to adjudicate all the various combinations of buffs. The problem is not the number of buffs; it's the difficulty involved with combining them. Instead of limiting the amount of buffs a being can have in place, instead rewrite the buffs themselves, so that they don't require so much brainwork to resolve.
2) Spell durations in minutes.
I would recommend against removing these, simply because the next-higher-up category, 10 min/lvl, is a very long time at high levels. For example, let's take Heroism. With two castings of Extended Heroism (3000gp for a Lesser Extend rod and 9000gp for a Pearl of Power III), a Wizard16 can maintain Heroism for ((16x10)x2)x2 = 640 minutes, or 10.66 hours. Effectively all day long.
At high levels, 10 min/lvl spells aren't temporary effects, they're all-day effects. Meanwhile, rounds/lvl spells still last for a combat. 1 min/lvl spells are the in-between.
Mr. Jacobs mentions a desire to cut back on the "just before combat prep" time. If we make it easier to combine buff spells, then combat preparation time will go down.
3) Summoned monsters.
Limiting summoned monsters would prevent the quintessential evil necromancer from existing, as he wouldn't be able to have an undead army.
If summon spells are too time-consuming, why not make them simpler? Perhaps by more strictly governing the behavior of summoned monsters, they would take less time to run? If the player did not have to decide just how much an Earth Elemental wants to Power Attack for or whether it would perform a bull-rush or a grapple, but the behavior of the Earth Elemental was pre-written, they would definitely take less time to run.
4) Dispel Magic
A very simple way to make Dispel Magic go faster is to reword the caster level check. Instead of "Roll 1d20 + caster level vs. DC of 11 + caster level of the spell in question," use "Roll 1d20 + caster level - 11." What really makes Dispel Magic "crash the game" is having to go around the table as the casters compare caster levels to both figure out the order of the dispel checks (which isn't really necessary, since a targetted dispel checks against them all) and then figuring out what the DC of the caster level check is for each spell (which can be streamlined by making it a one-step process).
5) Swift and immediate spells.
All Swift spells do is come pre-installed with Quicken Spell applied to them. Quicken Spell for everyone: that's it. If Swift spells are slowing your game down, it's because more PCs/monsters than the ones who took Quicken Spell are playing.
Immediate spells are almost entirely outside of the scope of Pathfinder, since only one exists in the 3.5 PHB: Feather Fall.
There's really not much Pathfinder can change here if a semblance of backwards compatibility is to be maintained. A PC/monster already gets one swift action per turn; there's not much more that can be done to limit them.
-Matt
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Increasing the stackability of spell buffs will only exacerbate several problems of high-end play.
1) It will make it more likely that PCs will seek out additional buffs, since they stack indefinitely, resulting in a longer prep time.
2) It does nothing to resolve the issue of dispel magic, and, in light of 1), only makes the problem worse.
3) It further increases the importance of casters over noncasters, since basically all those buffs come from spell sources.
4) It increases the power of casters over noncasters, since self-buffs are currently more powerful than buffs for allies, and there's no reason not to stack as many self-buffs as possible on yourself at that point.
Not sure f Pathfinder RPG will make high level combat work and are wondering if anything has been or will be done about various spell combinations and broken spells.
I just wanted to answer your original question: "Yes!". Many spells have subtle and not so subtle changes to tone them down or reduce abuseability, particularly in combinations. Sometimes this isn't reducing the actual power of the spell, just the extreme corners where particularly high DC's, levels, etc. would throw off the generally intended affect.
JJ - good to hear you guys have plans for using and improving high levels. Myself I find the 3.5 core system to be rather effective at high level, and ran my group to 31st level (only stopping for Rise of the Runelords). Things could get crazy, but still be "like old times" - I highly recommend Dungeon's "The Quicksilver Hourglass" to anyone running an epic game.
I think that swift spells are awesome when designed properly. Particularly, I like swift spells that allow a Ranger to fire a hail of arrows or somesuch. Basically, I think swift spells are great for Rangers and Paladins, who otherwise never use their spells, because it's not worth giving up your chance to attack when your spells are so weak.
Incidentally, I have a houserule that allows rangers and paladins to cast their spells faster: Standard action turns to swift action, and full-round to standard (if they have such spells at all). Since they usually don't have that many spells of mass destruction and death spells that affect whole armies at once, it shouldn't be that much of a problem.
I'll be able to thoroughly playtest this in my Curse of the Crimson Throne Beta campaign, which has a Paladin of Torag in it.
In fact, I could see all buff spells converted into spells that only work for a couple of rounds (effectively for one encounter) but can be cast as swift actions. Some might need some nerfing, or changing so the bonuses are straightforward (divine power pleasantly surprised me with that), but it might be a good idea.
The alternative is, of course, spells that basically work all day, so you can incorporate their buffs into your stats on your sheet. Again, this might warrant some nerfing, but again, it might take care of some problems
If you cannot handle adding +1s and +2s, don't play high level. I wouldn't recommend mid level either. Actually just play a video game where you can make it through a fight by spamming 'A' or 'X'. There is no need to dumb down the game for the sake of those who cannot do kindergarten level mathematics. That just gives you 4.0, the tabletop game where you don't have to think.
Dispel Magic has a CL cap. It will automatically fall behind and require the use of Greater Dispel to keep up. Tracking dispel is as simple as having the CL marked beside the buff name.
Case in point. I have a character whose active buff list looks like this:
Bite of the Werebear, Superior Resistance, Bless, Shield, Focusing Chant, Embrace the Wild, Wraithstrike, Master Air, Bite of the Wererat, Silverbeard, Surefoot, Divine Favor +3, Divine Power, Scintillating Scales, Hunter's Eye, Divine Sacrifice, Extended Greater Magic Weapon (armor spikes), Extended Greater Magic Weapon (glaive) Extended Magic Vestment (armor), Extended Magic Vestment (shield).
Law Devotion (AC) (9/10), Haste (currently on) (9/10)
Resist: 20% miss chance (Lesser Displacement Cloak), 50% miss chance vs ranged (Ring of Entropic Deflection, only if 10+ feet move).
Immune: Magic Missile, precision damage, Sonic damage.
If a Dispel lands on him, it still doesn't take very long to resolve since I just look at the Cl list and quickly go down the line, scratching stuff off.
If you aren't using Persistent Spell, it is much simpler.
I am really not in favor of a newly minted, completely artificial cap on how many spells you can have on your person. It just seems to video-gamey to me and makes no sense at all to the players, even if you touch it with the idea that the soul can't hold more.
Fighters can't ward off a wizard spell but suddenly they can sift through buff spells cast at them to choose the best (4? whatever?) that are going? That doesn't make sense. It's just a pure, artificial mechanical limitation in order to effect nothing but the speed of the game. I'd just rather not.
There are some things inherent in D&D. The options you get at higher levels are some of those things. Yes, it can slow the game down abit- but everyone who is playing Knows this and should take steps to alleviate it.
Note cards or index cards, colored dice and so on can go far, far further to speed things up than any contrived rule that seeks to do so and with far less damage to the game.
I do understand the trouble some folks have with high level play but I would prefer solutions to it that don't make High level play into "medium level play" with just a bigger number beside the "level" mark.
How do you resolve buffs faster?
Have the players use lists of the most common used buffs (i.e. the buffs the party regularly memorizes) so they can cross them off or whatnot as they are used. Yes, dispel magic Will slow things down abit but that's what it does. It's only slightly more time consuming to dispel 8 buffs than it is 4, since you are Still redoing the basic math of your attack bonuses and such.
How do you handle summoners?
Note cards work best. Note card per summoned creature listing the complete stats. (including feats the player may have that instantly buff them).
No card? No summon. Period.
If you have spells you regularly cast on the critters you create, you can write up cards for them with those stats too.
(card for unbuffed, one for bulls strengh, etc..) or even just nots on the card to indicate what the stats are when buffed- much like Barbarian NPC stats list raged/not raged stats. Saves a ton of time.
Attack rolls/damage rolls/spell SR and/or damage and whatnot:
Use colored dice and roll at the same time. Always use the same colors for the same attacks.
For example:
Fighter has 4 attacks at (whatever level depending on haste or not)
Always use Blue for 1, red for 2, green for 3, yellow for 4.
On your sheet have the colors listed so there's no argument later.
then you can always roll all your stuff in one go and disregard any damage dice for the attacks that failed.
Is there a miss chance? Roll the % with it.
What Not to do:
Let us Please not artificially "speed up play" using rules that gut the players in the guise of making the game better. It won't be better, it'll just extend the last level they actually acquired anything at, until the game ceases. It'd be better to just end the campaign.
I Have been in high level campaigns and they do, definately, take alot longer to resolve per-combat than do lower level campaigns. The players have the capability of doing wild and crazy things and to completely De-rail the careful machinations of the DM. That is what High-level play is about. The DM has to be able to handle it.
There is nothing wrong with a DM who can't. Myself, I couldn't do it and have no plans to try. If you are a DM who can't or won't then my solution to you is- Do Not Do It. End your campaigns earlier. I guarantee your players will be happier ending the campaign at 13 or 15 than they will at 20, if you have nerfed them to the point that they are still as powerful at 20 as they were at 13 or 15.
There is nothing wrong with being unable to run a high level campaign. or a middle level campaign. Stick with your strengths. I just ask that we don't try to model the design of the system around those who are happy in the realm of medium level, to the detriment of those who can and do play at high levels.
-S
I can't help but think that if the answer is, "The DM needs a spreadsheet," then we're asking the wrong question.
If you cannot handle adding +1s and +2s, don't play high level. I wouldn't recommend mid level either.
Ordinarily I would side more with Shisumo than Crusader (not that they are fighting). Looking back at my earlier argument: The game changes at higher levels, the style of play must change as well. It is unconscionable for a book of game rules to let poor new GMs wander unsuspecting into this territory.
"Go play a video game" is a little harsh. What I would rather see is the "Running" section of PFRPG reset the expectations about level. The book contains 20 levels, which for a long time have worked just as well as 4e's tiers. It used to go like this:
I know not everyone agrees with this assessment. At any rate, Pathfinder seems to have corrected the problem at low levels, at least in my current campaign. Epic Level came along and changed a bunch of these definitions, but I have never used them or wanted to use them.
The PRPG needs "stages" like this (not like 4e where these actually change the mechanics). This method is most likely to help with Encounter Building— that is, the Encounter Building guidelines should change from ~1-5, ~6-10, etc.
It needs to be clear that the life cycle of a normal campaign goes to 12th or 15th level, and levels beyond that are most appropriate for villain NPCs and special, high-level campaigns that the GM is prepared for. I would be satisfied seeing CR work in an entirely different manner past 15th level (maybe even 10th). Once again, Pathfinder is ahead with the inclusion of story awards.
Let's be honest, it requires an uncommonly capable GM to run for these characters... and I suspect that there are several such GMs reading this who might not recognize that in their own modesty (no joke).
So as much as I dislike saying things like: "If you can't handle it, don't play..." my answer to the OP's question of fixing high level play is: "Does it need fixing, or could we change our expectations?"
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I think that the full-round casting time for summon spells is a sufficient limiting factor. The "core" PFRPG rules doesn't include rapid spell as a metamagic feat, nor does it include chronocharms of the uncaring archmage.
At most levels of play I've noticed that most casters don't have time to muck about with summoning when they're in the thick of a fight. There's usually someone gunning for them, and they need to switch over to faster spells to stay alive.
If you wanted to further limit summon spells (which I don't recommend), I'd suggest that you add a rule the summoned beasties need to be commanded every round to act. Make it a move action per spell to do so and you've got a built in 2 summon spell limit.
1 round =/= full round. Also, summons have no better tanking ability than PF melees, aside from the fact they block more spaces on the battle grid. In other words, it's not like melee anything can actually make stuff attack them. Summons are inherently disposable though, so you don't have to burn resources on them.
All instances of you below are the impersonal definition of the word.
Anyways. With that said I was deliberately harsh about the go play a video game. That's what recalculating buffs is - adding 1s and 2s. If you lack the basic arithmetic abilities required for that you also lack the basic arithmetic abilities required to play a tabletop game. Seriously. How do you handle rolling say... 2d6+12 for damage, if +1 and +2 bother you? Video games do the math for you, so you can just 'I attack' over and over and over via A or X spam and have your super simple game.
It's that Power Attack thread all over again where people can't handle simple straight plus and minuses so they want to make melee even more bland auto attackers because they do not want to think.
If you lack the basic arithmetic abilities required for that you also lack the basic arithmetic abilities required to play a tabletop game. Seriously. How do you handle rolling say... 2d6+12 for damage, if +1 and +2 bother you? Video games do the math for you, so you can just 'I attack' over and over and over via A or X spam and have your super simple game.
Are you familiar with the Small Dungeon Theory? The idea behind it is that you have a finite amount of time to spend with your friends gaming, so how much of it do you want to spend opening doors?
Maybe it will help if you think of it as: how much of your gaming time do you want to spend doing basic arithmetic? And regardless of how much fun that is for you, there are a lot of people who don't enjoy that.
For further reading, I point you toward The Order of the Stick. If that's never happened in one of your games, you're an outlier.
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1 round =/= full round.
From the SRD:
"A spell that takes 1 round to cast is a full-round action. It comes into effect just before the beginning of your turn in the round after you began casting the spell. You then act normally after the spell is completed."If PFRPG has changed this definition (I doubt it), I guess it's less of a problem. :)
Anyways. With that said I was deliberately harsh about the go play a video game. That's what recalculating buffs is - adding 1s and 2s. If you lack the basic arithmetic abilities required for that you also lack the basic arithmetic abilities required to play a tabletop game. Seriously. How do you handle rolling say... 2d6+12 for damage, if +1 and +2 bother you? Video games do the math for you, so you can just 'I attack' over and over and over via A or X spam and have your super simple game.
Part of the problem here is that higher level of play requires much more organization than low level play. Players must know what stacks and what doesn't, even players with non-casters are required to be able to understand the implications of stacking and non-stacking bonuses and apply them dynamically as effects are added and removed from their character. At lower levels the non-casters can slide on much of this stuff.
. . High level play == Expert level play + Good organization
The more knowledgeable your players & GM and the more organized, the less trouble people are going to have with high level gaming. Some groups may never care enough about the minutia of the rules to ever really enjoy high level play.
Should this formula be changed? Should high level play be limited to groups of D&D geeks? Because lets face it right now you are either a D&D Geek, you don't play high level, or you are playing high level and screwing it up. (I mean geek in the best possible way :) )
3) Summoned monsters. Conjurers and necromancers who call up huge armies of monsters to fight for them slow things down too. Is limiting summoning effects....This is not a good idea. Summoners are cool. WotC made this mistake with Astral Construct also. A better solution is for DMs to insist that the player who plays a summoner (or anything else with a lot of mooks under their control), does so in an organized and sensible fashion.
Pre-bookmarked pages, notebooks with stats on them, index cards, chips, all these things help. The answer to 'this slows the game down' should be 'how can I speed it up?', not 'let's remove it'.
Peace,
tfad
I have a summoner PC and a druid cohort in my AoW campaign. Both the PC and the player contolling the cohort have binders with each creature they can summon in it. It takes no time for them to drop an ally onto the board or control multiple summoned creatures. It slows the round down some, but not by much compared to some games I have run and played in.
I think that swift spells are awesome when designed properly. Particularly, I like swift spells that allow a Ranger to fire a hail of arrows or somesuch. Basically, I think swift spells are great for Rangers and Paladins, who otherwise never use their spells, because it's not worth giving up your chance to attack when your spells are so weak.
I think swift spells work for personnel affecting short duration spells, such as a swift action expedious retreat. A one round burst of speed can get a wizard out of trouble or a fighter/wizard into it. Feather fall, should probably be one of the few, if not the only immediate spell.
1) Too many buff spells.Instead of limiting the number of buffs available, dig deeper and find the real issue: large numbers of buff spells are difficult to sort out, simply because of figuring out what stacks with what. If we instead streamline the spells themselves by rewriting them to make them interact with each other more simply, the problem would go away.
Streamlining would certainly help, but I really do think the core problem is too many buff spells that are too varied. Sure it's nice to have a variety of flavored buff styles, but I think it's become a problem, and an increasingly bad one with the addition of more and more splatbooks.
I also think it contributes to the 15-minute day problem that a lot of people perceive. Back in 1e, there were very few buffs. Magic Users had strength, shield, mage armor once UA came out. Clerics had bless, chant, and prayer as well as resist fear and some fire protection. Druids had barkskin and protection from fire. There wasn't a ton of protective or enhancing spells out there. In 3.5, there are loads of them, many of which work together to make it a very strong strategy to fight every fight fully buffed... and then be forced to limit your self to 1 maybe 2 fights a day.I think I might rather see a few specific buff trees - really lowish level spells that are either replaced in utility by a higher level version or that offer increasing benefits as the caster level rises. The benefits would be a bit easier to keep track of, being outlined all in once place.
Granted, it would leave a character vulnerable to a single dispel magic, but then it would be easier and faster to recover from as well with a single casting.
Don't get me wrong. There's something cool about having a lot of different strategies that a character could pursue with many varied buffs, but there's also something very uncool about it too with the time and attention consuming aspects of it.
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1) Too many buff spells. High level combats too easily turn into long sessions of "How many spells can I have going at once?"
I think this problem requires a two prong approach. First, the buff spells need to be more standardized and allocated better. Cat's Grace increases Dex, which requires changing Reflex saves, Initiative, Armor Class, and skills for an X number of rounds- then they must be readjusted back down. That is a lot of book keeping for one spell. The spell description could use the same concept as grapple does now by using Condition Modifiers. Cat's Grace places an enhanced Dex Condition upon a character resulting in +2 Reflex Saves and +2 AC (as an example). The second part of this prong is to allocate buff spells in a more logical manner. Certain classes get certain buffs. A Cleric can't buff Dex, make that the domain of Wizards, so no Bard ability will buff Dex (just as an example). This would require revisiting every buff spell and reallocating every one. Additionally every spell would need to be allocated to an appropriate class. This would ensure that Buff spells from one class do not overlap buff spells from another class requiring players to figure out what part of what spells stacks.
The second prong is to limit the number and type of buffs available by level. These limits increase at levels 5, 10, and 15 (reflecting increasing power levels, or stages). Minimum two buff spell slots, plus one spell trigger slot and a spell completion slot. These increase as power levels increase. This part may seem to increase the problem of too many buff spells, but see below for a way to keep them from slowing down the game.
2) Spell durations in minutes.
Quite simply as part of the standardizing buff spell descriptions to the Condition Modifier method, durations are also standardized. Many buff spells in 3.0 had durations of hours/level. In 3.5 these spells were altered to minutes/level. This change had two major effects. The first effect was that the number of encounters per day became more limited and the 15 minute adventuring day was invented. The second effect was that at the beginning of combat time is used for buffing, rather than getting into the fight - requiring hasty notes and lots of fast book keeping.
By changing buffs back to longer durations it encourages buff spells to be cast earlier in the day, allowing the book keeping to be done prior to combat and allowing more combats per game day. It also allows the cleric to get into combat right away instead of spending the first three rounds casting buff spells, then having to heal, then when he can finally afford to throw a cool offensive spell the fight is over. This would help ease the HealBot syndrome many clerics find themselves stuck in. Wizards can cast defensive spells earlier in the day, and not have to spend a few rounds out of combat. They can start slinging spells right away.
By having buff spells remain in effect longer it encourages more encounters per adventuring day. This essentially gives spell casters more useful spells through the adventuring day. It is no longer necessary to stop after the first good fight because all the buff spells are gone and they need to be reprepared.
3) Summoned monsters. Conjurers and necromancers who call up huge armies of monsters to fight for them slow things down too.
Summoners should have a theme for their summoned creatures. They stick to their theme, whether undead, demons, angels or elementals or whatever. There should never be a reason for combat to grind to a halt due to a summoner needing to look up stats to a monster and adding a template. This should be required to be done in advance. Summoning spells should not be able to summon just any critter out of the Monster Manual with just any template added. The summoning list should be very focused and if a particular player wishes to add a critter to his list, it should be learned first- summoned once before combat which in essence requires the player to have it statted out and ready to go. Once the summoner learns how to summon a new critter it is added to his focus list. The quantity is usually not the issue. The problem is usually in the book keeping.
4) Dispel Magic:
I'd like to see three variants to Dispel Magic. Levels 3, 6 and 9. A level 3 Dispel Magic only works against level 3 and lower spells, level 6 only works against level 6 and lower, etc. This prevents a simple level three spell from nerfing high level spells.
I'd like to see a simple mechanic for the DC to resist. A simple formula. Perhaps a single Will save, and like JJ said a random effect is suppressed or dismissed.
Something else I'd like to see (others I am sure will disagree with this one) is more aggressive Counterspelling. Instead of requiring the same spell be prepared to counter a spell, either a spell of the same level or of the same school. A Wizard can Ready an action to Counterspell. When the opposing arcane caster goes to cast, the Wizard can identify the spell being cast and use a spell slot of that level or higher to Counterspell. Yes this makes the complexities of Counterspelling more common, but it also prevents some of the complexities of some spells taking affect. It also allows combats to be more robust and fluid and therefore more interesting.
5) Swift and immediate spells.
Swift actions don't bother me much as you get only one per round and there are very few spells or abilities that make ample use of them. Just make sure that a Swift action must take place in your turn.
Get rid of Immediate actions. They do break the pacing of the game with unnecessary complexities.
1 round =/= full round.From the SRD:
"A spell that takes 1 round to cast is a full-round action. It comes into effect just before the beginning of your turn in the round after you began casting the spell. You then act normally after the spell is completed."If PFRPG has changed this definition (I doubt it), I guess it's less of a problem. :)
The difference between the two is a full round action spell cannot be interrupted except by ready actions. A 1 round action spell can if anything hits you between the end of this turn and the beginning of the next.
1 Standard action =/= 1 Full round action =/= 1 round action.
Edit: Hour/level spells like Bull's Strength were made Minute/level instead because they made stat boosting items utterly pointless. That's also not the reason why you get short adventuring days. The reason you get short adventuring days is because you let a stupid player be the caster, and as a result they cannot effectively manage their spell supply.
Edit again: Generally, D&D players are of above average intelligence and mathematical abilities. So no, I haven't had issues with random 1s. I only start to see the problem when one person is managing ten or more creatures at once, which means it only happens to DMs running highly in depth tactical high level combat. And then, not even that often. No, summoners don't get it. By the time they get that many buffed summons on the field the fight is long since over.
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The difference between the two is a full round action spell cannot be interrupted except by ready actions. A 1 round action spell can if anything hits you between the end of this turn and the beginning of the next.
Are there any such things as "full round" casting times? The SRD strongly implies that there are not. According to the SRD, your options are: standard action, 1 round, longer than 1 round, or free (swift). Where are you getting the idea that a full-round casting time exists separate from a 1 round casting time? (Outside of metamagic, that is, which does explicitly offer such a distinction.)
See: Sorcerers and Metamagic. Full round spells are rare otherwise, but it's still an important difference since one still resolves on your turn and the other doesn't resolve until right before your next turn.
Thanx for the response everyone. I'm kinda torn between a hybrid Pathfinder/3.5 game or 4th ed. Even if I go 4th ed I figure I'll buy Pathfinder to throw some $$$ Paizo's way and I never know if I'll bust out my 3.5 books again.
Edit: Hour/level spells like Bull's Strength were made Minute/level instead because they made stat boosting items utterly pointless.
Don't forget that in 3.0, you could Empower that Bull's Strength, too!
It's an interesting thought, separating buffs into long-term and short-term. Personally, I'm becoming a fan of using more general terms for duration, like "Encounter," "Day," or White Wolf's "for the remainder of the scene," which would cover a dungeon crawl.
It's worth playing around with.
-Matt
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2) Spell durations in minutes.
Another option to consider for buff durations: 2 rounds per caster level, used when the target of the spell wishes, within 24 hours. So 10th level caster Bull's Strengths the fighter on breaking camp that morning. They get into a fight that turns out nastier than expected. Fighter decides to burn some buff on the last 4 rounds of the combat. He has 16 rounds worth left for the day.
It does require some book-keeping, but not much. It gets rid of the 15min adventuring day by allowing the recipients to manage the use of the spell. Repeat applications top it back up to the max rather than stacking.
Using the idea of an 'Enhanced Strength' condition, it also prevents the use of anything else that does the same until all the buff is burnt and helps stop the stacking from getting too complex.
Thoughts?
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It used to go like this:1 You probably die when a stiff breeze knocks you over. Otherwise kill were-rats until level 2. 2-5 Village-level adventuring 6-10 Hero-level adventuring 11-15 National or world-scale problems, venturing into the planes 16+ your "epic" levels of power, where the PCs are some of the most powerful forces of their world. The PRPG needs "stages" like this (not like 4e where these actually change the mechanics). This method is most likely to help with Encounter Building— that is, the Encounter Building guidelines should change from ~1-5, ~6-10, etc.
This was my favourite part of the BECMI system. The flavour of the game changed as you went though the boxes - from dungon, to wilderness, to being a known power in an area, etc.
buff spell duration really needs to go up. Stopping to cast buffs every single encounter and spending such a long time doing so is a big slow down. So limited buffs and make the duration 10/min or 1hour/level
This was my favourite part of the BECMI system. The flavour of the game changed as you went though the boxes - from dungon, to wilderness, to being a known power in an area, etc.
Put concisely: the best way to fix high level play is more in-book support for level-appropriate encounter design.
APL vs. EL is not enough.