Director of Games
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Hey there all,
The next playtest cycle, which looks at High Level Play, is schedule to start on Monday the 19th of January, but will be pushed back until Tuesday the 20th due to a Paizo holiday.
Sorry for the delay and keep up the good work.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
Sorry to hear that...
Sadly, even with the delay, it is exceedingly unlikely that my runelords game will progress to high level fast enough to be meaningful. There's the rub when it comes to high level playtesting, I suppose.
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Creative Director
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Sorry to hear that...
Sadly, even with the delay, it is exceedingly unlikely that my runelords game will progress to high level fast enough to be meaningful. There's the rub when it comes to high level playtesting, I suppose.
That's actually the rub for high level play anyway. It takes a while to get to high level, and not only is it more complex, but by the time PCs get there, the players have been at the game for months or years. That's a lot of time to get bored or to see a more interesting looking game.
Anyway... we DO need a lot of high level playtest feedback. If you don't want to artificially advance your PCs to high level and skip to the end of the campaign but still want to do playtests, my advice is to put the current campaign on hold for a week or two and build up high level characters and try them out at 15th or 17th or 20th level on an entirely different adventure.
Any chance of a 'test' adventure we could use for that? I'm sure there's an aspiring writer around here somewhere who would like to make something.
Anyway... we DO need a lot of high level playtest feedback. If you don't want to artificially advance your PCs to high level and skip to the end of the campaign but still want to do playtests, my advice is to put the current campaign on hold for a week or two and build up high level characters and try them out at 15th or 17th or 20th level on an entirely different adventure.
That's what we did. About A month and a half ago, actually. We just wrapped up playing as renegade githyanki in a converted Incursion storyline. (Even though the gith aren't OGL, it seemed like the last chance we'd get to play through that scenario and I wanted to play a real gish at least once!)
So, my groups got some pages of scribbled notes to bring up when we do get to the high level playtest ready to go.
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Since it is for playtesting, instead of going for a full fledged written adventure, you can throw together a few sample scenarios and string them together.
A great playtest would be an ancient red dragon great for lvl 20
Fight a mad wizard and his construct and elemental minions, say level 18
Fight a barbarian overlord and his spirit army say level 16
And pick a favorite monster CR 15-18 and use it for lvl 15
You can create a story to connect them if you want, or not. But really, how many people get to fight BIG RED? Now is the time!
What exactly is "high level" play?
My group just got to 10th level in our CotCT campaign using the Pathfinder Beta rules. For us that's pretty high level.
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Creative Director
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Any chance of a 'test' adventure we could use for that? I'm sure there's an aspiring writer around here somewhere who would like to make something.
Not from Paizo, no. We don't have the time to create test adventures. Although the last adventures in any of the Pathfinder APs should work. Barring that, any of the high level adventures from Dungeon should work fine as well; we printed dozens of them, with every issue beyond #114 having one guaranteed.
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Creative Director
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What exactly is "high level" play?
My group just got to 10th level in our CotCT campaign using the Pathfinder Beta rules. For us that's pretty high level.
For Dungeon Magazine, we defined "high level" as anything that has PCs of 13th level or higher. For Pathfinder... I'm mostly interested in 15th level and higher, though, since that's when we more or less cap our Adventure Paths.
For the purposes of this playtest, I'm most interested in feedback from the higher end of that scale. 17th or 18th level PCs should get some playtest in of the highest-level spells... while 20th level playtests would get in some feedback on EVERYTHING.
I am afraid high-level play is the one area where I definitely cannot provide any playtest feedback on for the simple reason that none of my Pathfinder groups has reached that high yet. Unless, of course, you want feedback based on my 3.5E experiences with that... some things would likely still be relevant.
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Creative Director
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I am afraid high-level play is the one area where I definitely cannot provide any playtest feedback on for the simple reason that none of my Pathfinder groups has reached that high yet. Unless, of course, you want feedback based on my 3.5E experiences with that... some things would likely still be relevant.
Feedback on 3.5 experiences are certainly of some use... but we've also been gathering and hearing feedback on that for 6 years or so already, so it's not as valuable as feedback on the Pathfinder beta.
Again... if your campaign isn't high level yet, but high level play is important to you, the best thing to do is to have your players create 17th or 20th level characters and just spend a few days running some combats or a short adventure. It doesn't have to be something using characters you've been building up from 1st level.
I am afraid high-level play is the one area where I definitely cannot provide any playtest feedback on for the simple reason that none of my Pathfinder groups has reached that high yet. Unless, of course, you want feedback based on my 3.5E experiences with that... some things would likely still be relevant.Feedback on 3.5 experiences are certainly of some use... but we've also been gathering and hearing feedback on that for 6 years or so already, so it's not as valuable as feedback on the Pathfinder beta.
Certainly - I don't doubt that at this stage feedback on the Pathfinder Beta would be more useful than on 3.5E.
Again... if your campaign isn't high level yet, but high level play is important to you, the best thing to do is to have your players create 17th or 20th level characters and just spend a few days running some combats or a short adventure. It doesn't have to be something using characters you've been building up from 1st level.
High level play is somewhat important to me and my group, but the suggestion of running a number of combats at higher level in place of the standard campaign won't really work for us. The games we run are usually not hugely combat-focused, so we are more concerned with things like how long-term balance will be affected and how non-combat effects will impact the game. Rather than the relative power of each class in combat, it is the holistic relative power of each class that is important to us. If one class dominates in combat at higher levels, we don't care, as long as it's compensated by the other classes being more useful out of combat by having their own niches and this is unfortunately something that cannot be captured by running a few arbitrary combats as a playtest. Siloing and uniformization a la 4E stating that every class must be equally useful in combat and then equally useful out of combat is not for us (in my group this homogenization is seen very negatively) - luckily Pathfinder seems to be doing a decent job at avoiding that, but it does mean we would need to have a normal campaign at higher level to be able to judge balance, instead of relying on some random combats.
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To make a combat situation fun, ask your players for a top 5 or top 10 wish list of epic monters they would like to fight. One from each CR 15-23. Then tell them to create characters at 15th level, and have all notes on leveling from 16th to 20th level ready. You can level them quickly, and go through levels without really worrying about XP. It would be a quick way to get through a couple levels a night. Once it is done, have tham build new characters. Possibally having the group rotate through the base classes. Seeing how they like each. at the end of a month, you would have a pretty good idea of what works, and what doesn't.
At least that is a quick and dirty way of gettng in on the playtest. Other people who are running high level campaigns can work out the story telling flaws, as well as things that are obviously broken. JMO.
High level play is somewhat important to me and my group, but the suggestion of running a number of combats at higher level in place of the standard campaign won't really work for us. The games we run are usually not hugely combat-focused, so we are more concerned with things like how long-term balance will be affected and how non-combat effects will impact the game.
Sadly, this is what I meant when I said there would be huge obstacles to high level play. I don't think there could be a playtest I would put my trust into that wasn't 17 levels of organically played characters. I'm not a "professional" gamer, the playtesters I'm running for are doing it for fun, and none of us have the time to devote to derailing our current campaign just to test out the high level rules.
O! If only there were a two-year playtest period. I suppose I shall have to leave it to more prodigious gamers than myself. I wish Pathfinder RPG the best though, and I hope the designers don't have to rely solely on newly generated 17th level PCs to playtest.
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There are plenty of Organic games out there, who just convered to PF. Also, i know alot of people like to start off with 12th level games an work up from there. So the Rping side of it really doesn't concern me as i trust other gamers to provide that spin. I also think it is important that alt of battles be run, not simulated, to be sure things work. All in all i am excited to see what kind of changes come out of this. Class abilities, spells, feats, wonderous items.
On a side not, Jason, I think i speak for everyone here when i say "Thanks for allowing gamers to make a difference."
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Creative Director
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Perhaps you can send your PCs through a magic portal into another realm or time or even a shared dream where they inhabit high level bodies? They'd either make up 20th level versions of themselves, or maybe they'd play 20th level heroes and godlings from your world's history that you design and hand out to them for a session. The "dreamworld" adventure has the high-level PCs learn information that they can then use as clues or something for the real, waking-world versions of them, and presto! You have a high level playtest that doesn't impact your campaign's current storyline.
Perhaps you can send your PCs through a magic portal into another realm or time or even a shared dream where they inhabit high level bodies? They'd either make up 20th level versions of themselves, or maybe they'd play 20th level heroes and godlings from your world's history that you design and hand out to them for a session. The "dreamworld" adventure has the high-level PCs learn information that they can then use as clues or something for the real, waking-world versions of them, and presto! You have a high level playtest that doesn't impact your campaign's current storyline.
I love what you guys do, and it's precisely because Runelords is so good that my players would never stand for that. Our schedule is so tight that I almost need to enter the Witness Protection Program if I cancel a session.
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Creative Director
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Perhaps you can send your PCs through a magic portal into another realm or time or even a shared dream where they inhabit high level bodies? They'd either make up 20th level versions of themselves, or maybe they'd play 20th level heroes and godlings from your world's history that you design and hand out to them for a session. The "dreamworld" adventure has the high-level PCs learn information that they can then use as clues or something for the real, waking-world versions of them, and presto! You have a high level playtest that doesn't impact your campaign's current storyline.I love what you guys do, and it's precisely because Runelords is so good that my players would never stand for that. Our schedule is so tight that I almost need to enter the Witness Protection Program if I cancel a session.
Sounds like what you have on your hands is more of a campaign and less of a playtest, then. Not a bad thing, of course, and if the Beta's working well enough to keep a campaign going so well that the players don't WANT to try something else, I'll take that as a compliment! :)
Perhaps you can send your PCs through a magic portal into another realm or time or even a shared dream where they inhabit high level bodies? They'd either make up 20th level versions of themselves, or maybe they'd play 20th level heroes and godlings from your world's history that you design and hand out to them for a session. The "dreamworld" adventure has the high-level PCs learn information that they can then use as clues or something for the real, waking-world versions of them, and presto! You have a high level playtest that doesn't impact your campaign's current storyline.I love what you guys do, and it's precisely because Runelords is so good that my players would never stand for that. Our schedule is so tight that I almost need to enter the Witness Protection Program if I cancel a session.Sounds like what you have on your hands is more of a campaign and less of a playtest, then. Not a bad thing, of course, and if the Beta's working well enough to keep a campaign going so well that the players don't WANT to try something else, I'll take that as a compliment! :)
Please do.
Maybe what I'm doing isn't playtesting, but I come back to these boards and talk about where the beta succeeds and fails my holistic gaming needs. In my experience, that's the best kind of data anyway, since no game exists in a vacuum.
I'll stop hogging this thread, thanks for listening! (and for the great AP!)
Yeah unfortunately I've not much room to make that kind of change either. I've got two campaigns under the Beta rules, we just finished the first Burnt Offerings of the Rise of the Runelords campaign. Which with the new rules, the last fight nearly devastated them, leaving only two characters kicking (And one was just barely saved from -9 hp). It was rather amazing, I'm throwing in a bit extra with the rest of the campaign as the group was rather insistantly and consistantly defiling anything to do with Lamashtu.
And the second campaign just in the midst of Shadow in the Sky.
So I've got campaigns going and less of playtests as well. We were more into the playtesting during alpha. With beta my groups were more interested in playing the gaming than trying to find flaws or shortcomings.
Perhaps you can send your PCs through a magic portal into another realm or time or even a shared dream where they inhabit high level bodies? They'd either make up 20th level versions of themselves, or maybe they'd play 20th level heroes and godlings from your world's history that you design and hand out to them for a session. The "dreamworld" adventure has the high-level PCs learn information that they can then use as clues or something for the real, waking-world versions of them, and presto! You have a high level playtest that doesn't impact your campaign's current storyline.I love what you guys do, and it's precisely because Runelords is so good that my players would never stand for that. Our schedule is so tight that I almost need to enter the Witness Protection Program if I cancel a session.Sounds like what you have on your hands is more of a campaign and less of a playtest, then. Not a bad thing, of course, and if the Beta's working well enough to keep a campaign going so well that the players don't WANT to try something else, I'll take that as a compliment! :)
Well, the distinction between a campaign and a playtest is a bit artificial in this regard. I also have a campaign (or rather... plural campaigns), but I think a campaign is the best way to playtest a set of rules, because it playtests both the combat stuff and the non-combat rules, as well as how these two interact. It is a more holistic approach than making a bunch of characters and running some combats with them - I am not denying that that too has some value, because you are able to get more data points on the focus issue that way, but really such playtesting is not too different from mathematical simulation and cannot yield as much insight on the various fun-factors that depend on an interaction of many elements both in and out of combat.
This, I think, is one area where 4E went wrong for me. 4E clearly had razor-sharp focus on combat elements in its design-process and used both mathematical simulation and playtesting to get at this. But I would suspect the playtesting was mostly not embedded in a campaign, but rather consisted of assorted random combats to 'playtest' the individual elements of the system. Under such artificially constrained conditions, it is probable that a character class that was worse in terms of combat prowess did not seem very fun to play even if it would have compensated for this weakness through its non-combat abilities. Of course, this would never show in a playtest so far removed from how the game is actually usually played - as a campaign. The result was the homogenization of the classes so that everybody is good at everything at all times, which would make sense given the playtest, but I don't consider it very fun for a long-term campaign.*
*The above is my suspicion based on anecdotal evidence from playtesters and on the resultant system - it does not mean that the 4E design process necessarily took that route.
Regardless, here you see my reasoning/example of why I see it as vital to embed playtesting in a proper campaign, rather than doing it as a series of disjointed encounters.
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thread Jack:
I totally understand your point with 4e. Howeer the players are what makes the adventure fun(and the DM). i played athe second adventure in 4e(can't remember the exact name). we wetre in the underdark, and one of our characters really didn't like the head gaurd. we gave up plot points to Rp this. to the point of one character nealing sown and another pushing him. shortly there after said guard ended up in the water.
Just an example of what a good group can do with limited rules.
thread Jack:
I totally understand your point with 4e. Howeer the players are what makes the adventure fun(and the DM). i played athe second adventure in 4e(can't remember the exact name). we wetre in the underdark, and one of our characters really didn't like the head gaurd. we gave up plot points to Rp this. to the point of one character nealing sown and another pushing him. shortly there after said guard ended up in the water.
Just an example of what a good group can do with limited rules.
Oh definitely - the DM and the players ultimately make or break the game. Heck, I have even ran and played in 'games' with no pre-defined rules at all and sometimes it was fun - but that does not mean the rules were good - it means the DM and players were good. It is not my intention to turn this thread into how bad the 4E rules are (although I will freely admit that I do in general dislike them [having said that, I do recognize that there are some decent ideas there too]). Rather, my point was to illustrate, how artificially reductionist playtesting, such as running random combats, can skew the data on what rules are and are not fun in a game, in such a way that the data does not concord with how the games are actually played for the most part (I would say that most games are played as long-term campaigns rather than disjointed encounters and combats - at least that is my experience). Even if 4E did not actually do this - the point would still stand.